Bilawal hints at no-trust motion against NA Speaker, says govt plans to kill Zardari

LAHORE: Pakistan Peoples Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Wednesday alleged that the government wants to murder former president Asif Ali Zardari. He said Imran Khan is the only prime minister who ran the campaign of Modi.

Addressing a press conference at the Bilawal House here, he said when PPPP head Asif Ali Zardari was in jail, he wasn’t provided medicines and now the NAB wants him to be infected with COVID-19.

He paid glowing tributes to policemen hailing from Jamshoro, Nawabshah and other parts of Sindh who displayed courage during an attack on the Karachi Stock Exchange. He said: “We have announced rewards for them all; we are living peacefully in Karachi due to the sacrifices of these martyrs who have also saved our economy.”

He said Imran Khan's government has sabotaged the country. On Tuesday, Punjab's young doctors demanded a risk allowance and “we support their demand. We have provided a riskallowance to all doctors in Sindh. The government has not made an increase in the pensions and salaries of people.

He said: “Throughout history, we have never been faced with such challenges. We are combating the locust issue. Floods have been predicted and the PTI makes each issue a disaster such as in the case of COVID-19. The government has increased the issues facing us.” Bilawal said people should be provided relief by imposing taxes on the rich. The way that they have dropped a bomb on people by increasing the petrol price is through an illegal notification and the losses suffered by oil companies are being compensated through burdening people. These are all PTI government's frontmen and now “we are expecting a tsunami of price hike”. In every budget of theirs, there is pain for common people and relief for the rich.

He said: “Imran Khan speaks in our absence and does not answer our questions; I had challenged him to a debate on television. The problem with Imran Khan is that he is not ready to be the prime minister of our country but is happy to be that of his own party. We want Imran Khan to sit with us and debate so that he understand what COVID-19 is and what is locust and what are the threats but Imran Khan is a prime minister only on Twitter and Facebook.

Condemning Imran Khan for calling Osama bin Laden a Shaheed, the PPP chairman said he calls Shaheed a terrorist who killed Pakistani citizens, soldiers, journalists, men, women and children. Who was behind Yousaf Ramzi who was behind the 1994 failed mutiny, who was behind the destruction in Swat, he asked. Imran Khan refuses to call Benazir Bhutto a Shaheed but calls a terrorist a Shaheed. So far, Imran Khan has not clarified his statement and thus bringing Pakistan to disrepute.

He said Imran Khan has become a joke and whenever he opens his mouth, a joke comes out. He has never met representatives of doctors, nurses and labourers. Whenever he met, he met the rich. There is no health or education in his budget. He is only giving relief to his cronies. This budget is a PTIMF budget. He said Imran Khan attacks the constitution consistently. He attacks the 18th Amendment because he wants to revert to one-unit. Pakistan will be at a great loss by reverting to one-unit which means ending the autonomy of the provinces. Imran Khan is against the provinces and the federation and against those who talk in the interest of the country.

He said the PPP does not want any NRO and will face cases, but “your cases do not have substance and you are unable to convict us”. Imran Khan has given several NROs to his cronies and the first NRO he gave to his sister Aleema Khan. He said Imran introduced an amnesty scheme for thieves because he himself is a beneficiary of General Musharraf's amnesty. Imran Khan has many faces but the reality is that he is the biggest hypocrite in the history. Imran Khan boasts of money given to poor people through BISP which is a programme introduced by the PPP government to help women, said Bilawal. He changed the name of BISP to Ehsaas. It is a fact that Imran Khan took back that Rs 12,000 from the poor in the form of electric bills. He asked if Imran Khan has any empathy for the poor, why he allocated Rs 34 billion less for poor people.

Bilawal said the governance can only be seen in Sindh and Balochistan. Punjab, the biggest populated province of Pakistan, has been handed over to a trainee chief minister who is in quarantine for the last two years. He said the federal government not only deprived Sindh of its due share from divisible pool but also took away Rs 483 billion of Punjab. This PTI government is unable to collect its own revenue, so why the failure of the federal government should be shouldered by the people of Punjab. If people are not given relief, people will drag prime minister Imran Khan out of the Prime Minister’s House. “Imran did not accept my challenge to show me a single hospital anywhere in the country, which parallels the NICVD”.

Bilawal said Imran has destroyed the national airline because he does not know through what difficulties a pilot and other staff go during their employment. He does not know that every pilot's licence is reviewed every six months. A minister whose own degree is fake, accuses pilots of having fake licences. This is shameful, he said.

The PPP chairman said Pakistan will be isolated like Sweden because of mismanagement by the PTI government. The PTI government wants to take advantage of one accident and sell the national airlines. This government also wants to sell Roosevelt Hotel. These are Pakistani assets. “Our pilots are our assets because they are famous for their excellence all over the world.” Many airlines have employed Pakistani pilots because they are the best in the world. Imran Khan is selected and his is a fake government and now it wants to destroy the PIA. The auditor general of Pakistan issued a report which says that during the last year, this PTI government did a corruption of Rs 273 billion. This is Imran Khan's corruption and he will have to be accountable. He would have to be accountable for sugar report. He will have to be held accountable for giving benefits of billions of rupees to his frontmen.

Responding to questions of journalists, Bilawal said: “We have never talked about minus one but Imran himself is talking about minus one. Democracy is threatened by Imran Khan and his ego. The PTI government is on a vilification campaign against the Sindh government because Sindh is the only province which has shown governance. Imran Khan does not have a mandate, he is selected man and his mandate is fake which can evaporate any time. He said he hopes the PML-N will support the PPP stance with vigour and also hopes that Shahbaz Sharif will get well soon and contact the PPP for holding an APC. He said the PPP takes nobody's signal but the people of Pakistan. He challenged that the people who rigged Senate elections should come out in the open and tell people how this rigging was managed.

The PPP chairman said there is a unanimous opinion in the society against the PTI government and Imran Khan. He said the PPP will put up this point in the APC that the speaker of the National Assembly is running NA sessions partially. “We will raise the issue of no confidence against the speaker in the All Parties Conference,” he said.