Bilawal Bhutto has ‘biggest UNGA fan moment’ with Jacinda Ardern

New York: The Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, recently had a fan moment with one of his favorites, New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern.

Zardari has been in the US since 19 September and attended the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York yesterday where he met several global leaders. However, he was blown away when he met ‘superwoman’ Jacinda Arden.

In a tweet, the Foreign Minister referred to his meeting with PM Ardern as “his biggest fan moment of UNGA,” and noted that she is the second woman after his mother, Benazir Bhutto, to give birth while serving as prime minister.

He happily added that Ardern had told him that her daughter Neve Te Aroha Ardern Gayford’s date of birth — 21 June — is the same as Benazir Bhutto’s.

Earlier this year, New Zealand premier paid homage to the late Benazir Bhutto in her Harvard University Commencement address.

She stated, “I met Benazir Bhutto in Geneva in June of 2007. We both attended a conference that drew together progressive parties from around the world. Seven months later she was assassinated”.

She also praised Bhutto in her speech, saying, “There will be opinions and differing perspectives written about all of us as political leaders. Two things that history will not contest about Benazir Bhutto. She was the first Muslim female Prime Minister elected in an Islamic country when a woman in power was a rare thing. She was also the first to give birth in office. The second and only other leader to have given birth in office almost 30 years later, was me”.

Bhutto, the first and only female prime minister of Pakistan, had spoken at the same event at Harvard 30 years ago in June 1989.

Ardern also shared an excerpt from one of Bhutto’s speeches about the fragility of democracy from the latter’s own commencement at Harvard in 1989, stating that it still rings true.