'Selected' PM Imran has destroyed Pakistan: Bilawal

Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said that the "selected" Prime Minister Imran Khan had destroyed Pakistan in the name of change.

"Today every section of the society is on streets protesting against this puppet and selected government. When growers came out protesting, the government baton-charged and tortured them. As a result, one grower named Ashfaq Langrial lost his life," he said while addressing a corner meeting in Goharabad, Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B) on Friday.

Bilawal said that the people of G-B have the right on the rivers and mountains of the region. "This is the reason I always talk about the rights of property. I want to give the people of G-B the right to their properties and minerals of these areas."

He said that the benefits of Diamir Bhasha dam should be given to the local people first as well as the share in the employment in a similar way the PPP has done to locals in Thar.

The PPP leader said that his father and former president Asif Ali Zardari initiated the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to give job opportunities to people. "He [Zardari] wanted that people of backward areas like G-B, [erstwhile] FATA and Gwadar should get the fruits of the CPEC."

He said that the PPP always worked for the people and relations between the PPP and G-B goes back three generations. The people of G-B, he said, supported former prime minister and PPP founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, ex-premier Benazir Bhutto and Asif Zardari in the past.

"Zulfikar Ali Bhutto ended FCR and Rajgeri system, Benazir Bhutto introduced democracy and allowed political parties to function in G-B, Asif Ali Zardari gave G-B an assembly, the first governor and chief minister and 25,000 jobs to the youth."

Bilawal asked the people to give the PPP a heavy mandate so it could give the region a full-fledged status of a province, the right to rule, the right to property and the right to employment.

He also promised to give Benazir labour card to the people of G-B like it has given it to labourers in Sindh, adding that his party would also establish hospitals in every district of the region where treatment would be provided free of charge.