Peshawar: As electioneering picks up in the country, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has said that those who claimed to be representatives of the sanctity of vote have instead become the country’s “mehengai [inflation] league”.
“Those who claimed to be representing the ‘sanctity of vote’ have shown their true colours and have become Pakistan’s ‘mehengai [inflation] league’ instead,” Bilawal said while taking a veiled jibe at Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s (PML-N) supremo Nawaz Sharif during his address at a workers’ convention in Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
“They have no respect for the [public’s] ‘vote’ […] neither do they know about serving the people nor how to govern [the country],” he added.
Nawaz — who returned to Pakistan after ending a four-year self-imposed exile in London in October — faces an uncertain future with regard to his possible participation in elections due to legal issues — as he had been disqualified from holding public office.
This is not the first time the PPP chairman — in light of general elections scheduled to take place on February 8 next year — has taken a jibe against the PML-N and the party’s possible prime ministerial candidate Nawaz. A day earlier, while addressing a workers’ convention in KP’s Mardan, the former foreign minister lamented on traditional politics terming it as the country’s worst enemy and stressed the need to embark on “new politics”.
Bilawal, without taking any names, also took a jibe at the Imran Khan-led Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), saying: “Those who claimed to be representative of change instead turned out to be representative of disaster.”
“Taking ‘U-turns’ is a sign of a coward, not a leader,” he said while referring to Khan’s infamous justification for changing political stances.
Responding to the criticism of the PPP’s performance as part of the PML-N-led Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) government, the PPP chief said that he is proud of his 16-month performance and is willing to contest the polls on his performance as the foreign minister.
“The PPP has a better chance today [in February 8, 2024 polls] which it didn’t have back in 2013 and 2018 elections,” he said.
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