Sharif’s political career is over, says Bilawal Bhutto

Rakes Pagara-led GDA as grand dysfunctional alliance

HYDERABAD: Envisaging an end to the political career of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan People’s Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Wednesday advised the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz leader to accept the ‘reality’.

"Open your eyes Mian sahib and accept it: that today you have completed your political age," said Bilawal while speaking at a public meeting in Badin district on Wednesday.

The event was organised to mark the 31st death anniversary of an iconic activist of the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy, Fazil Rahu, whose son Ismail Rahu, former PML-N Sindh president, defected to the PPP last year.

"The lap of the dictator [martial law administrator Gen Ziaul Haq] in which you were trained in politics and the hand that could take you to Saroor palace [in Saudi Arabia] from the prison are no longer here."



Bilawal blamed Sharif for failing on all counts of leading the country, foreign policy, parliament, federation, Balochistan, Punjab, Fata, Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Kashmir.

"You cannot even control your younger brother [Shehbaz Sharif]," he said while taking a jibe at the former prime minister.

The PPP's chairman alleged that the Sharif brothers together are deceiving the nation. "But the people will no longer fall prey to your chicanery."

Bilawal reminded the former prime minister of his unfulfilled promises that he had made during his visits to Sindh.

He recalled that Sharif had announced Rs2 billion for the drought-stricken people of Tharparkar, special packages and development projects for the coastal Thatta and Sujawal districts and billions of rupees for development of Jacobabad district.

But the PPP chairman claimed that the federal government has still not released even a fraction of the promised amount.

"You didn't even give the National Finance Commission award to the provinces and stopped their finances."

He contended that both Sharif and Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chairman Imran Khan are blue-eyed boys of the deep state.

"We can't leave this country on the whims or mercy of Nawaz Sharif or Imran Khan."

Criticising Khan's political campaign in Sindh, Bilawal said some turncoats and rejected politicians are taking him to towns of Sindh.



"Among them one is a Pir of Multan [Shah Mehmood Qureshi] whose spiritual followers don't even vote for him. I can only see spent shells on the left and right of Khan."

Bilawal questioned the veracity of Khan's claim of championing an anti-corruption movement and pointed out that a former chief minister of Sindh ousted on the charges of corruption is now among his ranks.

He claimed that Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Pervaiz Khattak faced serious allegations of corruption, but so far no inquiry has been initiated against him.

"Where is your accountability commissioner?" he asked.

He saw the presence of a strong element of dynastic politics in the PTI and in this regard cited the case of former PTI general secretary Jehangir Tareen whose son replaced him as a candidate for the by-poll after the former was disqualified by the Supreme Court.

The PPP's chairman flailed the K-P government for funding some controversial religious seminaries from the province's education budget but failing to build new hospitals and universities.

"While reiterating the slogans of change, the PTI itself stands changed now."

He vowed that soon his father and PPP-Parliamentarians president Asif Ali Zardari will teach politics to the folks of the PTI.

Bilawal raked the Grand Democratic Alliance led by the PML-Functional leader and spiritual head of the Hur Jamaat against the coals and dubbed it a grand dysfunctional alliance.

He described it as a grouping of political orphans who beat the drums that the PPP has destroyed Sindh but themselves completely failed to deliver when they were in power.

"The cabal includes three former chief ministers, many former ministers and advisers, pseudo nationalists, self-serving and opportunist people."

Bilawal also obliquely censured the PPP dissident and former home minister Zulfiqar Mirza, who is also part of the alliance, for his alleged disloyalty with the party.