HYDERABAD:
Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Friday reiterated his party’s determination to foil all the foreign conspiracies against the country, including its nuclear and missiles programme, and urged the government to desist from unilateral decisions to create rifts with allies.
Addressing a massive public gathering in Garhi Khuda Bux in Larkana district to commemorate the 17th death anniversary of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, Bilawal warned that it was becoming difficult for him to convince his party’s lawmakers to support every government legislation.
Bilawal highlighted the achievements of the former PPP prime ministers, his grandfather late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his mother late Benazir Bhutto, including the country’s nuclear programme and the missile technology programme.
“The PPP will fail all conspiracies targeting the nuclear and missile programmes,” the PPP chairman said while commenting on the recent US sanctions against companies involved in Pakistan’s missile programme. He said both the projects were the gifts from late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto.
“Imran Khan [Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) founder] is just an excuse, the real target is Pakistan’s atomic programme and the missile technology,” he added, while referring to the statements of support for the PTI founder by some officials of the incoming US administration of Donald Trump.
He asked the PTI founder to clarify that the people who give statements in his favour “every other day are not the ones who are against Pakistan’s atomic and missile technologies programme”. He added that those who supported Imran happened to be staunch supporters of the Zionist Israeli regime.
“This party [PTI] and Imran himself should condemn these people,” Bilawal told the crowds. He contended that such support gave the impression that a lobby wanted to install a government in Pakistan which could compromise on everything for the sake of power.
The PPP chairman said the powers that be had no concern whatsoever for democracy, human rights or prisoners in Pakistan, rather they wanted to target Pakistan’s nuclear programme. He said that Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s “biggest crime before the global powers was the Islamic atomic bomb”.
He also highlighted the three-decade-long political struggle of his mother, saying that those who plotted her assassination wanted to install puppets in Pakistan who could comprise on the manifesto, ideology and even rights of the people as well as on the country’s national security and its atomic programme.
Coalition ties
Bilawal reminded the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) that the ruling party’s electoral mandate restricted it from taking unilateral decisions. “The only mandate which the government has is one of taking collective decisions through parliament,” he emphasised.
Bilawal said the PPP neither asked for power nor the ministries when supporting the PML-N to form a government at the Centre. He added that its singular demand was an equitable Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) for all provinces, particularly the less developed ones.
He said that the PML-N had failed to implement the agreement with the PPP for supporting the Shehbaz Sharif-led government. “It’s becoming difficult for me to compel my MNAs again and again to go to the [National] Assembly to complete the quorum and support every bill they [PML-N] tabled,” he warned.
The PPP’s leader cautioned that the government could not function in the existing way of governance because it was incumbent upon it to find consensus-based solutions through parliament to the challenges confronting the country.
He fleetingly touched upon the contentious issue of the proposed construction of six new canals from the Indus river and conveyed that the lower riparian province of Sindh had been strongly criticising the Centre’s canals policy.
He appealed to President Asif Zardari that he should help the government realise that the decisions taken with consensus happened to be powerful decisions. Bilawal believed that no individual party had the mandate or the power to deal with all internal and external problems alone.
Making a laconic speech on the occasion, President Zardari tried to allay concerns of the smaller provinces, saying that they would not be deprived of their due share of water or gas. “I want to tell my friends that they don’t need to worry about it,” he said.
“All the provinces will get what rightly belongs to them,” the president declared. “Sindhu [river] will be given what is the right of Sindhu. There can be no other decision and nothing short of it,” the president told the gathering.
He said the world was progressing and ‘modern things’ were proving to be beneficial for humans, adding that he believed things which were good for human beings and the political parties would be good for Pakistan as well.
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