Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari launched a vicious verbal assault against Prime Minister Imran Khan, wherein the PPP chairman accused the premier of only wanting Sindh for its resources while ignoring the people.
“[Imran] neither needs Sindh nor Sindh’s people but he wants Sindh’s islands, gas, coal, tax revenue, the money you give” Bilawal said, adding that Imran had failed to spend money on Sindh to solve its problems.
The PPP chairman claimed that Imran had refused to give the province its due Rs160 billion last year, and had projected to deny Rs200 billion this year.
Speaking to a fired up crowd at the Hyderabad rally of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), Bilawal alleged that PM Imran had refused to accept Sindh as a province of the country and therein asked who the province actually belonged to.
“He can only rob your rights but you, the people of this country will not tolerate him. We will protect our rights and our democracy and make this PM run away,” he added.
Bilawal told the crowd to think of “how much employment we could have provided to the youth of Hyderabad” with the aforementioned Rs200 billion.
“This is the same government that promised one crore jobs. I ask the people of Hyderabad whether they have gotten even one job from those one crore jobs,” he said on the occasion.
“This is not Imran Khan’s money, this is the money of the people of Hyderabad and we will go to Islamabad and take back our right from them,” he added.
He further stated that none of the provinces, including Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) and Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), belonged to PM Imran.
Bilawal, terming the ruling party as “puppet, selected and formed as a result of rigging”, said that Imran’s vision for a Naya Pakistan had only resulted in a more “expensive Pakistan”.
The PPP chief lamented the inflation that had struck the country, wherein food items like wheat and sugar were beyond the people’s purchasing power. “Imran’s tabdeeli (change) has brought so much inflation, unemployment and poverty in the last year that half of Pakistan’s families have food deficiency,” he said.
In further criticism of the government, he said that the prime minister had once said that he would “commit suicide before going to the IMF (International Monetary Fund)” to ask for a loan.
On the occasion, he accused the government of giving relief to the rich while bringing pain to the poor. He said that Imran had also promised houses to the people, but so far no results from the affordable housing schemes had been shown.
He said that the people have been “suffering the burden of an incompetent and corrupt government”.
During his address, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) senior leader and former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi told the people of Sindh to join the PDM in their long march on March 26, stating that the struggle would be for only a few days but it would help secure a better future for Pakistan.
Abbasi said that PDM’s struggle aims at bringing a change in the system of governance. “We have to restore the system to a parliamentary, constitutional one.”
“This war will be fought by PDM for the people of Pakistan. I want to promise you that we will not let anyone take away the rights of the people of Sindh granted under the 18th Amendment,” he added.
Abbassi added that the alliance that stands before the government now collectively held 70 per cent of the votes in the last elections without “rigging”.
He said that the price of electricity had nearly doubled from Rs13 per unit to Rs25 due to the actions of the PTI and maintained that the only solution to the current state of affairs was to support the ideology of the PDM.
Moreover, Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan (JUP) leader Owais Noorani replied to Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Director-General (DG) Major General Babar Iftikhar’s statement regarding the army being kept out politics.
“You say don’t drag army into politics, no one dragged you into politics. Please say, who dragged [the country’s first military dictator] Ayub Khan into politics?” Noorani said.
“They say don’t drag us into politics, then who was distributing the Rs1,000 notes [at Faizabad sit-in]?”
National Party (NP) President Dr Abdul Malik Baloch, during his address, stressed that the way the parliament and the Constitution were currently being treated should be ended.
“Today, islands of Balochistan and Sindh are being occupied by the Centre. Under what law? They belong to Sindh and Balochistan,” he maintianed.
Alongside Bilawal and Abbassi, the stage was shared with Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) Senator Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri and other opposition leaders. PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz could not attend the rally as she was tending to her daughter, who had recently been involved in a road accident.
The host political party installed thousands of chairs at the rally’s venue on Hyderabad’s Hatri By-pass; moreover, flags and banners to welcome the opposition’s central leadership were installed on major streets and roads. The night prior, fireworks were seen launched in preparation of the rally.
On Saturday, Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah had claimed that there would a “historic” rally of the PDM, an alliance of almost all opposition parties, in Hyderabad.
