ZA Bhutto reference: Bilawal pins hope on CJP Isa to 'rectify constitutional mistake'

Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has said that he expects Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Qazi Faez Isa to "rectify constitutional mistakes" as the Supreme Court is set to hold a hearing regarding a presidential reference against Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's death sentence on December 12 next week.

"The whole nation knows Quaid-e-Awaam was innocent [...] The nation has to be informed who were the facilitators behind [Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's] murder," the PPP chairman said while addressing a political gathering in Kohat district, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) on Sunday, Geo News reported.

"We hope that justice would be done with the history," the former foreign minister added while saying that he hopes the entire world will be told why the leader of the Muslim world was hanged.

Bilawal remarks come as the apex court is set to take up the 12-year-old presidential reference on revisiting the controversial death sentence awarded to former prime minister ZA Bhutto next week, The News reported.

Former president Asif Ali Zardari, on April 2, 2011, approached the apex court through a presidential reference under Article 186 of the Constitution to seek its opinion on revisiting the trial of the PPP founder. The last hearing of the reference was held on November 11, 2022.

On the other hand, the PPP chief said he is contesting polls against his rivals to resolve the issues of the masses.

“Someone is fighting elections to get out of jail while someone is fighting to escape from jail,” Bilawal said at the rally.

He said the PPP does not represent the elite as it is “representative of the workers and poor of the country”.

“We will bury the traditional politics of division and initiate the politics that aims at serving the masses.”

The PPP chief also expressed hope that his party would form the government after the upcoming general elections and ensure that the masses would get their rights.

The PPP chief said he was warned against holding party conventions in KP amid security threat alerts. “But [..] our workers say they are neither scared nor they would surrender before terrorism..”

Bilawal said Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) wanted to roll back the 18th Amendment in a bid to curtail the autonomy of the provinces.

The PPP chief’s public gathering was part of election campaign that he has been running in the run-up to the general elections scheduled to take place on February 8 next year.

Politicking has been on the rise across the country since the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) announced the Feb 8 election date following the Supreme Court’s intervention.