OSLO - Pakistani Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai said Thursday that she could see herself becoming prime minister of her country in about 20 years. ‘I want to help my country, I want my country to go forward and I’m really patriotic,’ said 17-year-old Malala, the youngest Nobel laureate ever.
‘That’s why I decided that I’d join politics and maybe one day people will vote for me and I get the majority, I’ll become the prime minister,’ she said. Asked about her political aspirations during a press conference with Norway’s female premier Erna Solberg in Oslo, Malala added that ‘you can become prime minister when you’re 35, not before that, so (it’s) like in many years’ (time).’
The Pakistani teenager became a global icon after she was shot in the head and nearly killed by the Taliban on October 9, 2012 for insisting that girls had a right to education. Malala said she was inspired by former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto who was assassinated in 2007. ‘She is an example giving this message that women can go forward because in some communities women are not supposed to go forward and become a prime minister,’ said Malala, who now lives in Britain. Malala is sometimes criticised by opponents in her home country, who have accused her of being a puppet for the West who betrays Muslim values. On Wednesday, she received the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with India’s Kailash Satyarthi, who has been fighting against child labour for 35 years.
Moreover, a man who disrupted the Nobel prize ceremony in Oslo by waving a Mexican flag streaked with red in front of the peace prize laureates has been fined, Norwegian police said Thursday.
The protest at the presumed massacre of 43 Mexican students came as Pakistan’s Malala Yousafzai and India’s Kailash Satyarthi displayed their prizes to rapturous applause on Wednesday, with the man shouting, ‘Don’t forget the students in Mexico.’ The security breach is especially serious since child rights activist Malala, who was lucky to survive a Taliban assassination attempt in October 2012, remains a target for Islamist extremists.
Police quickly escorted the man out of the building. ‘It shouldn’t have happened,’ Oslo police chief John Fredriksen told reporters. The asylum seeker has been since handed over to immigration police. ‘The 21-year-old man who got into City Hall and disturbed the Nobel award ceremony has been fined for disturbing the peace and for entering illegally,’ a police statement said. The man agreed to pay a fine of 15,000 krone ($2,000, 1,700 euros). He did not have an invitation to the ceremony but probably slipped in with a group of journalists.
Mexican media said he was a left-wing militant who wanted to draw the world’s attention to the disappearance of 43 students in southern Mexico caught up in the country’s bloody drug war.
The two Nobel laureates appeared unperturbed by the incident. ‘There was nothing to be scared of,’ Malala said in a press conference Thursday. ‘There are problems in Mexico, there are problems even in America, even in Norway. So the problems are always there in every country and it’s really important that children raise their voice, children come forward,’ she added.