Announces plan of action against PTI govt over rising inflation
Staff Reporter Karachi
PPP chairperson Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Sunday accused Prime Minister Imran Khan of trying to turn all institutions of the country into his party’s Tiger Force, saying the current state of affairs showed “this is not tabdeeli (change), but destruction.”
He was addressing a PPP rally at Karachi’s Bagh-i-Jinnah, held to mark the anniversary of the 2007 Karsaz bombing on Benazir Bhutto’s homecoming convoy and with an eye to strengthen the party’s foothold in Karachi and mobilise its workers in the metropolis for upcoming electoral challenges.
“Imran Khan is trying to turn all institutions of the country into his Tiger Force. He attacked the parliament, Senate, judiciary, ECP, Punjab police, Punjab bureaucracy as he changed the Punjab police chief and chief secretary many times. No institution is left as he is even trying to make the media his Tiger Force,” Bilawal alleged.
Bilawal’s comments come amid widespread speculations over the appointment of the Inter-Services Intelligence director general.
The issue has been in the news since last week following the unusual delay in the issuance of official notification of Lt Gen Nadeem Ahmed Anjum’s appointment as the new chief of the premier intelligence agency.
Bilawal said his party would not allow the premier to be left “unaccountable”. “PPP jiyalas will not spare him. Whenever he speaks, he makes a mistake.
Now we are warning Khan that his days are numbered,” he said, announcing that all PPP leaders would protest at their district levels against inflation and poverty, while the party’s Youm-i-Tasees on October 30 would be held in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Bilawal also accused the government of having done a “disservice” to education by introducing the Single National Curriculum, and criticised it for firing Pakistan Steel Mills workers “in a single day” and pushing their families into poverty.
The success in the recent cantonment board elections and winning of PPP candidates in the by-polls had lifted the spirits of the PPP leadership, which found it high time to fill Karachi’s political vacuum that further widened when once the most popular party of the city, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, came under the radar of the security establishment following the March 2015 raid on its Nine Zero headquarters and the August 2016 speech of its founder Altaf Hussain, he added.
Lashing out at the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf for its “anti-people” policies, Bilawal vowed to continue protesting against the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan till it was sent packing.
“I am warning Imran Khan that reverse counting has begun [for this government],” Biawal, flanked by his sister Aseefa Bhutto Zardari, said while addressing the party’s power show in Karachi organised to commemorate those who lost their lives in the 2007 Karsaz tragedy.
He promised the participants that his party would form the next government “very soon”. “Our protest will continue until [PM] Imran’s rule is over.”
PTI’s politics was not of change but of destruction, he said. “Look what they did to curriculum… this is not change but destruction… look what they did to HEC by reducing its budget… this is not change but destruction,” he told the charged crowd.
Bilawal said that Imran Khan used to say that “when inflation rises, it means the prime minister is corrupt”, and today the country was at a historic high of inflation which means that we have the “most corrupt prime minister in the history of Pakistan”.
“Today everything from wheat to sugar is being sold at record high prices. Imran Khan has destroyed the economy of this country,” he added.
