In his last HYDERABAD rally, PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari asked former coalition partners not to skip the polls because of the possibility of an election delay. He foretold that if any political group shied away from voting, another would fill the hole.
At the opening of a water filtration plant in Hussainabad, Hyderabad, Bilawal made it plain that skipping the polls would lead to political demise without directly naming the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) or any other party from the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM). A proverb he used was, “Jo darr gaya, who mar gaya” (he who gives in to dread dies).
He saw that several erstwhile allies were considering skipping the general elections after trying to do so in the by-elections and local government contests. Bilawal said that if any of their allies wanted to withdraw their support, they should feel free to do so, but that the people would understand that when one party left, another would come in.
To back up his claim, he cited the MQM-P’s decision to abstain from the LG elections in Sindh.
If the MQM-P hadn’t withdrawn from the election, Bilawal said, the PTI wouldn’t have won local government seats in Karachi and Hyderabad.
“I refrained from touching their [MQM-P leaders’] feet, but I pleaded with them to run in the local government elections in Karachi and Hyderabad and not to give its space to an anti-Pakistan party, which was responsible for the May 9 violence,” he continued.
The PPP chief claimed he had proposed to the MQM-P that they both agree to respect the results of the election.
The MQM-P leaders, however, “became afraid and backed out” of the elections.
Bilawal argued that the PPP was still active today despite the deaths of many of its leaders and activists and other repressive measures, since the party had continued to compete in electoral politics.
He went on to say that the PPP members were not taught to avoid voting or be afraid of the results. We carried the weight of our martyrs on our shoulders and went on fighting.
After sweeping the LG elections in Karachi and Hyderabad, the PPP leader declared that his party would do the same across the country.
He assured the PPP’s base that he would “wipe out” the PTI if elected since the party has continued to engage in “hatred and division” in its politics.
He also claimed that the PTI was behind the May 9 attacks on the GHQ in Rawalpindi and the Jinnah House in Lahore, in an effort to sow discord between Pakistani institutions and the general public.
To challenge the PTI, Bilawal said he would not rely on a caretaker prime minister or chief minister, a police head or bureaucrat in a prominent position.
To paraphrase, “I will fight this anti-Pakistan party with the public’s support.”
In response to the relentless character assassination effort that has been waged against the PPP for three generations, beginning with the party’s founder and his maternal grandfather, former premier Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Bilawal called on his supporters to come to the PPP’s help.
He asked PPP backers to use social media to spread news of the party’s successes in Sindh to those in Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
The leader of the PPP claimed that the PTI’s political activists were too “naive” to understand that former prime minister Imran Khan, a cricketer, was unable to provide for the people of Pakistan in the same way that the more seasoned PPP could.
“Let’s help the burger kids see that the PPP, not some cricketer, is responsible for the NICVD [National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases] being where it is,” said one politician.
Even if they weren’t quite there yet, Bilawal thought that programmes like the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board (SSWMB) and the Peoples Bus Service were getting the job done.
He claims that the service’s original intent was to offer comfortable public transport via bus for no more than Rs50 per person.
I want to deliver water treatment facilities to Multan, Faisalabad, and Peshawar just like I did in Hyderabad.
Former provincial ministers Sharjeel Inam Memon, Syed Nasir Shah, and Jam Khan Shoro, as well as former chief minister of Sindh Murad Ali Shah, shared their thoughts.
