Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari denied that his party’s relations with key parties of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) had worsened, adding that any rift within the opposition alliance would only benefit the incumbent government.
Addressing a press conference in Jacobabad after meeting local PPP leaders and workers, he said: “I will suggest PDM to take decisions with due diligence and patience… divide and rule is the strategy of non-democratic forces.”
“It will be in favour of PDM and democracy if we [opposition parties] continue to give tough time to the government in parliament,” he added.
Denying any rumours of siding with the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Bilawal said that his relations with Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Vice President Maryam Nawaz were still “good”.
Similarly, he expressed his belief that the PDM President and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman was not cross with the PPP, adding that the veteran politician would not show bias towards one or the other party.
The scion of the Bhutto dynasty also wished quick recovery to PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz and JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman, saying that he wanted them to resume their political activities at the earliest so that the movement to topple the PTI government gains momentum.
Speaking about the recent tensions between the PPP and the PML-N, having arisen out of PPP going ahead in getting Yousaf Raza Gillani elected as leader of the opposition in the Senate without the PDM’s blessing, Bilawal said that his party will soon convene a meeting to discuss the matter.
Bilawal remarked that he had been told by those around him that the history between his party and PML-N had shown that the PPP and PML-N do not readily get along, remarking that it would be a tough nut to crack.
He maintained that he had been working for the last three years to ensure the parties could collaborate for the benefit of democracy, adding “we do not want this government to benefit out of any infighting between opposition parties”.
“And there can be no greater defeat, than the prime minister losing in his own constituency,” the PPP chairman said, referring to Gillani winning the Islamabad Senate seat, with the government candidate Abdul Hafeez Shaikh losing by a margin of six votes.
On the recent changes in the federal cabinet, Bilawal said that despite changing three finance ministers in as many years, PTI government’s economic policies remained the same. “PTI designs economic policies to provide relief to rich and make poor suffer,” he maintained.
The PPP chairman said that Prime Minister Imran had made his aide on petroleum, Nadeem Babar, a scapegoat in his own incompetence.
The PPP chairman said the last year’s fuel crisis was a mega corruption scandal of this government and his party will raise this issue at all fora. “Imran Khan changes his cabinet members for mere face-saving but we will not spare them.”
Lambasting the PTI’s so-called poor handling of the economy, he said: “Even war-torn Afghanistan has a better economic growth rate. The war-torn Afghanistan has a lower inflation rate.”
He added that there is no reason for Pakistan’s economy to rank behind these countries. “The only reason is that a puppet has been imposed on us who has no political, economic or historical acumen and is not capable of governing Pakistan,” he said.
In this regard, the PPP chairman said that Pakistan was sorely unprepared to combat the third wave of the Covid pandemic. He stressed the “stubbornness” of the government in refusing to purchase vaccines had led to Pakistan lagging behind other regional countries in vaccine rollout.
“Pakistan is not at all ready to challenge the third [coronavirus] wave which is cropping up and coming in front of us.
“If we are not ready then [it is] only because our federal government [is showing] stubbornness on this policy, that it is not ready to buy vaccines for every Pakistani which is the only solution to this problem.”
He said that Pakistan is lagging behind the most in terms of vaccinations, counting Bangladesh and India to be the countries doing better than Pakistan.
Bilawal also called on the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to play its role to ensure free and fair elections across the country, and not just in Punjab.
“I am confident that our candidate from Jacobabad [Ijaz Jakhrani] will be declared a winner the next day if ECP blocks the government’s attempts to rig the election like it did in Daska by-poll,” he said while speaking about the upcoming by-election.
The PPP leader said that the PTI-led government has rendered poor helpless due to its flawed and IMF-centric economic policies.
Bilawal said that the country was “drowned into sea of inflation” even before the government entered into International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan programme, further announcing that they would challenge the ordinance regarding the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) in the court.
He said that the ordinance would be an attack on national sovereignty if the central bank operates at the behest of the IMF.
“There is historic unemployment in the country due to PTI-IMF deal,” he said and added two finance ministers have been changed during the past three years.
Responding to a question regarding Shaukat Tareen’s refusal to join the government’s economic team due to National Accountability Bureau (NAB) case, Bilawal said that his party had been advocating since day one that NAB and economy cannot function together.
“PPP has been saying only one thing: NAB’s law is a black law. It was made by a dictator. It was made for political engineering […] to threaten people’s representatives who are loyal to their parties,” Bilawal said.
He said that PPP Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari had once said that “the economy and NAB cannot go hand in hand”.
“And now everyone acknowledges this.”
