In a speech in Hyderabad on Tuesday, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), decried the absence of an equal playing field to political parties ahead of the 2019 general elections and called for a shift to the “old ways” of administering the country.
At a press conference in Sukkur, the PPP leader said that the previous Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government had the “wrong policy” and demanded that those responsible for the “self-sabotaging” national security policy that had revived the country’s terrorism be held accountable.
Specifically naming former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan and former ISI director general Lt. Gen. (ret.) Faiz Hameed, Bilawal questioned their ignorance of the consequences of their policy of rehabilitating terrorists who escaped from Afghan prisons.
Did they really think it would take the terrorists a long time to travel from the tribal areas to Karachi and the rest of Pakistan? He wondered how the government could have been so naive as to believe that “the terrorists who martyred children and teachers… and the soldiers won’t attack Pakistan army again.”
The PPP chairman issued a demand, “… If they are politicians, they should be held accountable by us politicians, but if they are in any other institution, they should be held accountable by that institution.”
When the administration in Afghanistan changed in August 2021, Bilawal said, Pakistan’s borders were left open. He argued that the people of Pakistan, especially the families of the victims, have a right to know the truth about why their country has allowed terrorists to return home.
He pondered, “How is it possible that citizens, leaders, soldiers, and policemen keep giving sacrifices and then we defeat terrorists in Pakistan but later two or three individuals decide that they can forgive terrorists without seeking permission from parliament and the people?”
Former foreign minister and current opposition leader Bilawal informed reporters that militants in Sukkur and Larkana divisions of Sindh are using US weaponry that found their way to them after the US retreat in Afghanistan.
He remarked, “We can now have a fair idea that how dangerous was the policy of [Imran] Khan and how dangerous its consequences have been,” and that the state would have to directly tackle terrorists, bandits, and other outlaws.
He expressed regret that “ostrich politics” had become the norm in Pakistan, in which authorities avoided dealing head-on with difficult and potentially deadly topics. I think it’s time for a radical departure from the status quo in American politics. We owe it to our residents, people, state, and institutions to treat them fairly.
Paying tribute to his late mother, Benazir Bhutto, Bilawal stated that she was the only political figure of her time who spoke openly and courageously about battling terrorists. “Benazir Bhutto, when no male politician could dare, used to stare terrorists in their eyes,” he continued.
Incorrect: “Everyone isn’t playing on the same pitch. When challenged about it against the backdrop of the disqualification of two political heavyweights, Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan, Bilawal responded, “And this is my objection.”
He said that inflation was the country’s biggest problem right now, and that holding elections quickly would be the best way to fix it. He reasoned that crime was increasing because of the economic downturn.
Theft of electricity
When asked about the current crackdown on people who use electricity without paying their bills, the PPP chairman noted that the real theft began when the provinces and local communities that contributed to power generation were not given enough compensation.
He cited the Thar district in Sindh as an example, where residents had gotten insufficient recompense for the use of their coal resource to produce inexpensive power.
He said that the Sindh government, rather than the federal government, was subsidising Thari citizens. He said that the bureaucracy in Islamabad was to fault for the over twenty year delay in the Thar coal project.
He said that the provinces of Sindh and Balochistan were being forced to buy more expensive liquefied natural gas (LNG) while other provinces received their gas for free. The problem of electricity theft cannot be solved unless this unfairness is corrected.
He promised that if the PPP was elected to the next federal government, solar power facilities would be built at least on a divisional level around the country to generate inexpensive electricity. He also mentioned that the public-private partnership was where they aimed to get these initiatives off the ground.
Former chief minister of Sindh Murad Ali Shah, along with former ministers Sharjeel Inam Memon and Syed Nasir Shah, and Bilawal, visited the family of murdered journalist Jan Muhammad Mahar in Sukkur earlier.
He was disappointed that the murder investigation was going slower than expected. He pleaded with the interim chief minister of Sindh to hear the grievances of Mahar’s loved ones.
