Asif Ali Zardari: Biography, Age, Education, Family and Political Journey (2026)

Who is Asif Ali Zardari?

Here is the main point. Asif Ali Zardari is the great survivor of Pakistani politics. He has been called a playboy, a prisoner, a widower, a deal-maker and a statesman. All five descriptions have been true at some point.

He entered public life through marriage. He spent years in jail without a conviction that lasted. He was written off again and again. And yet he has now been elected to the highest office in the country twice, something no one else has done.

People who admire him call him the master of reconciliation, a man who can sit down with any rival and find a bargain. People who dislike him use a different name. Both groups agree that nobody understands the arithmetic of power in Pakistan better.

If you want to understand how Pakistan’s coalitions are built and broken, study Asif Ali Zardari. He has been in the room for almost every important deal since 2008.

Early life and family

Asif Ali Zardari was born on 26 July 1955 in Karachi. That makes him 71 in 2026. He is the first head of state of Pakistan to have been born after the country became independent.

His father was Hakim Ali Zardari, a landowner from the Nawabshah district of Sindh and the chief of the Zardari tribe, a Baloch tribe long settled in Sindh. His father also had business interests in Karachi, including a well-known cinema. His mother, Bilquis Sultana, came from the family of Hassan Ali Effendi, the educationist who founded a famous school in Karachi where Muhammad Ali Jinnah once studied.

So he grew up between two worlds: the farms of interior Sindh and the city life of Karachi. As a young man he played polo and boxed. As a child he even appeared in a film.

He was the only son. He has sisters who are in politics too. Faryal Talpur has been a member of the Sindh Assembly and a powerful figure in the party. Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho is the health minister of Sindh.

Education: a disputed record

People often ask where he studied. The honest answer is that the record is unclear.

• He had his early schooling at Karachi Grammar School.
• His official biography says he passed out of Cadet College Petaro, in Sindh, in 1972.
• He also attended St Patrick’s High School in Karachi.
• He has said that he later studied business in London. That claim has never been confirmed by independent reporting.

Why did it matter? In 2002 General Musharraf’s government made a university degree compulsory for anyone standing for Parliament. That rule would have decided who could contest. The Supreme Court struck it down in April 2008, a few months before he became President.

Marriage to Benazir Bhutto

His first try at politics went nowhere. In 1983 he stood for a district council seat in Nawabshah and lost.

Everything changed on 18 December 1987, when he married Benazir Bhutto in Karachi. She was the daughter of the executed Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and the leader of the PPP. The marriage was arranged by the two families. Many people thought it an odd match: a serious, Oxford-educated politician and a polo-playing landowner’s son.

Eleven months later, in 1988, she became Prime Minister, the first woman to lead a Muslim-majority country. He became the Prime Minister’s husband, and one of the most talked-about men in Pakistan.

They had three children: Bilawal, born in 1988, Bakhtawar, born in 1990, and Aseefa, born in 1993.

Minister, and “Mr Ten Percent”

During Benazir Bhutto’s two governments, from 1988 to 1990 and from 1993 to 1996, he became a figure of controversy.

• He was elected to the National Assembly in 1990.
• In her second government he was a federal minister, first for the environment and later for investment.
• His opponents accused him of taking commissions on government contracts. They gave him a nickname that stuck: “Mr Ten Percent”.

He has always denied this. He and his party say the accusations were invented by rivals and by the intelligence agencies to bring down an elected government. Both of her governments were dismissed by Presidents on charges that included corruption.

Eleven years in prison

This is the part of his life that shaped everything after it.

Add the two periods together and you get about eleven years behind bars.

What came of the cases? This is important, so let’s be exact. He was accused of corruption, money laundering and murder in courts in Pakistan and abroad. Some courts convicted him at first, including a Pakistani court in 1999 and a Swiss magistrate in 2003. Those convictions were later set aside or overturned on appeal. He was acquitted in the Murtaza Bhutto case in 2008. No conviction against him was ever finally upheld.

The 2007 amnesty

In October 2007, General Musharraf issued a law called the National Reconciliation Ordinance. It closed thousands of old cases against politicians and officials. The cases against him and Benazir Bhutto were among them. The law was part of an arrangement that let her return from exile.

The Supreme Court struck down that law in December 2009 and ordered the cases reopened. By then he was President, and the Constitution protects a serving President from criminal proceedings.

December 2007: the turning point

Benazir Bhutto came home in October 2007. On 27 December 2007 she was assassinated after a rally in Rawalpindi.

The country was in shock, and parts of Sindh were burning. He returned at once. At her funeral gathering he calmed angry crowds who were shouting against the federation with a Sindhi slogan that became famous: “Pakistan Khappay”, meaning “we want Pakistan”.

Her will named him to lead the party. He made their 19-year-old son, Bilawal, the chairman and took the post of co-chairman himself. He has held it ever since.

The PPP won the most seats in the election of February 2008 and formed a coalition government.

First presidency, 2008 to 2013

The coalition pressed General Musharraf to go. He resigned in August 2008. On 6 September 2008 the electoral college chose Asif Ali Zardari as President of Pakistan.

What he did

• Gave up his own powers. The Eighteenth Amendment of 2010 took away the President’s power to dismiss an elected government and dissolve the National Assembly. It also moved many subjects from the centre to the provinces. Presidents had used that power to remove three governments in the 1990s, including his wife’s two.
• A new deal on money. The 2009 finance award gave the provinces a larger share of federal taxes.
• Income support. A cash-transfer programme for poor women, named after Benazir Bhutto, was started in 2008. It still runs today.
• A new name for a province. The North-West Frontier Province became Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
• A completed term. On 9 September 2013 he left office at the end of five years. He was the first elected President in the country’s history to do so, and he handed over to an elected successor.

What went wrong

• The judges. He delayed restoring the judges whom General Musharraf had removed. A mass march led by Nawaz Sharif forced the government to give way in March 2009.
• A prime minister lost. In 2012 the Supreme Court removed Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani for refusing to write to the Swiss authorities about the old cases against the President.
• The 2010 floods. He was criticised for travelling abroad while a fifth of the country was under water.
• A terrible year with America. In 2011 an American contractor shot two men in Lahore, US forces killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad without telling Pakistan, and a NATO air strike killed Pakistani soldiers at the border.
• Daily life. Long power cuts, high prices and constant bombings made his government very unpopular. In the 2013 election the PPP was reduced to its base in Sindh.

The President’s powers: before and after 2010

Out of office and back in court, 2013 to 2023

After 2013 he ran the party while Bilawal grew into the chairman’s role.

• In 2018 he was elected to the National Assembly from Nawabshah.
• In June 2019 the National Accountability Bureau arrested him in a case about fake bank accounts said to have been used to launder money. He was released on bail on medical grounds in December 2019. Several references were filed against him. He denies them all, and as far as we could find none has ended in a conviction.
• In 2022 he was widely described as the planner behind the vote of no confidence that removed Prime Minister Imran Khan. He brought together parties that had been bitter rivals, including his own and Nawaz Sharif’s.

Second presidency, since 2024

After the election of 8 February 2024, no party had a majority. The PPP agreed to support a government led by the PML-N without taking ministries. In return it asked for constitutional offices, including the presidency.

On 9 March 2024 the electoral college voted.

• Asif Ali Zardari: 411 votes
• Mahmood Khan Achakzai, backed by the PTI’s side: 181 votes

He took the oath on 10 March 2024 as the 14th President. The PTI’s leaders called the election unlawful, because they reject the result of the general election behind it.

How is a President elected?

The public does not vote. The President is chosen by an electoral college made up of the members of the National Assembly, the Senate and the four provincial assemblies. The provincial votes are weighted so that every province has an equal say.

His second term so far

• He announced that he would not draw a salary, citing the country’s economic troubles.
• In April 2024 he addressed Parliament and called for reconciliation between the parties.
• His younger daughter, Aseefa Bhutto Zardari, has acted as First Lady and was elected to the National Assembly from his old seat.
• In May 2024 he helped calm protests in Azad Kashmir over the prices of flour and electricity.
• In February 2025 he paid a state visit to China.
• In November 2025 he signed the Twenty-seventh Amendment. Among many other changes, it gives a President lifetime protection from criminal prosecution, unless he later takes another public office. The opposition tore up copies of the bill in Parliament. For a man who has faced as many cases as he has, the personal meaning of that clause was not lost on anyone.

His health

He is 71 and has been in hospital more than once. He broke a bone in his foot while getting off a plane in 2024. In April 2025 he was admitted to a Karachi hospital for several days with an infection. His office said there was no cause for alarm. He has diabetes and high blood pressure by his own account.

His two presidencies compared

What supporters and critics say

Supporters call him the most patient politician of his generation. They point to the years in jail, the Eighteenth Amendment, the income support programme, a completed term and his skill at keeping coalitions together. They quote the party’s favourite line, that democracy is the best revenge.

Critics see something else. They say his name has been linked to corruption for more than thirty years, that the cases ended through deals and delays and not through clear verdicts, and that his governments have been poor at running services. The PTI adds that his second election rests on a general election it calls stolen, and that the 2025 immunity clause was written for his benefit.

Both pictures are drawn from real events. That is why he remains one of the most argued-about figures in the country.

Timeline: Asif Ali Zardari at a glance

Why his story matters

• It shows how personal Pakistani politics is. A marriage, a murder and a will changed the direction of a national party.
• It shows how cases and politics are tied together. His time in prison and his time in office cannot be told separately.
• It shows the value of compromise, and its cost. His deals have kept governments standing. They have also left many voters feeling that nothing ever changes.

To see how the vote that brought his allies to power in 2022 works, read our explainer on the vote of no confidence. For the house that elects half of his electoral college, see the Senate of Pakistan.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Wikipedia, “Asif Ali Zardari” — biography as last edited on 7 October 2026; only parts were read for this draft, as listed in the editor’s note.
• National Assembly of Pakistan, list of members — Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Aseefa Bhutto Zardari listed as sitting members on 8 October 2026.
• Provincial Assembly of Sindh, Cabinet and Functionaries — Azra Fazal Pechuho listed as health minister.
• Constitution of Pakistan, as amended up to the Twenty-seventh Amendment — Articles 41, 48 and 75 on the President’s election and powers.
• Khaleej Times, “Pakistan grants lifetime immunity to president, army chief” — November 2025.
• Malay Mail, report on the Twenty-seventh Amendment — 13 November 2025.
• ARY News, “President Zardari suffers from fever due to infection” — April 2025.
• Dawn, “Murtaza Solangi appointed spokesperson for President Zardari” — 20 August 2025.