MUZAFFARABAD: Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has said that whenever fair and transparent elections are held in the country, his party will form governments in Centre and the four provinces.

“The next prime minister of Pakistan and the four provincial chief ministers will be jiyalas (loyalists) of Pakistan Peoples Party,” Mr Bilawal said at a big public meeting in Charhoi town of Kotli district on Tuesday.

The PPP chairman, accompanied by former prime minister Raja Pervez Ashraf and former federal minister Qamar Zaman Kaira, came in Charhoi town to address the public meeting held in connection with the campaign of PPP nominee Chaudhry Amir Yasin for the Oct10 by-election in LA-12, Kotli-V.

Amir Yasin is the son of Chaudhry Muhammad Yasin, PPP’s regional president for AJK, who had returned from two constituencies of Kotli district in July 25 general elections.

Considering Charhoi (LA-12) a safe constituency to field his son, Mr Yasin has taken oath from the other constituency.

On July 25, two PTI activists were killed in Mithi Jand polling station of Charhoi during an armed clash between supporters of Mr Yasin and PTI nominee Shaukat Farid.

Mr Amir, his elder brother Shahnawaz and seven others, blamed by the victim party for the double murder, had courted arrest on July 27 and were lodged in district jail Kotli ever since. Mr Yasin himself is on an interim pre-arrest bail until Oct 8.

In a reference to this, Mr Bhutto-Zardari said the puppet AJK government was conspiring against the PPP and that was why it had thrown the PPP nominee behind the bars after falsely implicating him in the murder case.

“The PPP loyalists have defeated the dictators and autocrats in the past and this puppet government means nothing to them... They are all set to inflict another defeat on the puppet,” he said.

Mr Bhutto-Zardari said he had recently toured entire Sindh and southern Punjab by road and after witnessing the zeal and zest of PPP workers at different places he could safely say that they were fully organised to defeat the puppet and accomplish the mission of Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Shaheed Benazir Bhutto.

The PPP leader said that his party had always stood for the downtrodden segments of society, the farmers, labourers and students and it would rid people of the onslaught of dearness, poverty and unemployment.

“It’s only the Peoples Party that can give relief to the masses,” he said.

Mr Bhutto-Zardari regretted that PTI government had rendered those 16,000 government servants jobless who had been given employment by Ms Bhutto.

Similarly, he said, this government had also sacked as many as 10,000 employees of Pakistan Steel Mills in Karachi.

“This is an anti-public and anti-poor government which had formed a government on false promises to the people of Pakistan and Kashmir.”

“Where are those 10 million jobs and 5 million homes that the selected prime minister [Imran Khan] had promised and committed to the people,” he asked, vowing that the PPP would hold the puppet government accountable for all of its fictitious claims.

Mr Ashraf, Mr Kaira, Mr Yasin and leader of the opposition in AJK assembly Chaudhry Latif Akbar and others also spoke at the public meeting.

Published in Dawn, October 6th, 2021