Youth to lead march against govt: Bilawal

Calls for restoration of student unions in every province like Sindh

KARACHI:

Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said on Wednesday that the young generation is fully prepared to fight to oust the incompetent prime minister.

It is time for the youth to lead the country against the decayed and frustrated elements having no sanity and sense of responsibility, said at Sindh Peoples Student Federation (SPSF) convention at Pakistan Arts Council, Karachi.

He said the SPSF office-bearers and workers had through years of unshaken nerve-writhing struggle taken the right to form a union of which they had been deprived by was dictator Ziaul Haque.

Chairman Bilawal said that it was being propagated all over the country that the PPP needed feudals and elites, while they did not know that the PPP was in fact a party of the SPSF. The fact is that the feudals need PPP, instead.He said that February 27 march of the party will carry the demands for restoration of students union all over Pakistan. He reminded that Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto in her first term had restored the student unions along with the labour unions, but under a conspiracy her government was toppled and the government that followed imposed ban on student unions.

The PPP chairman said that 18-year-old people could vote in elections, meaning that they could choose the Prime Minister of the country, they should also be ready for the call to arms and to lay down their lives for the country, but when it comes to choosing his own representative, he has no choice left for a change.

He said that Pakistanis got this country not as a result of any war or violence but as a result of a peaceful democratic struggle under the leadership of Quaid-e Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

Quaid-e-Awam Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto gave the precious gift to the nation in form of democracy and gave every citizen the right to vote.

He was of the view that the biggest atrocity against the youth of this country was that an attempt was made to suppress their voice.

He lamented that the young people aren't allowed to talk about their own problems. Some frustrated elements are predominantly obsessed with a negative idea that country's youth shouldn't get involved in mainstream politics. They are the advocates of zero politics in universities as if doing politics is either a bad taboo or a crime.

"Doing politics is the right of the youth and doing politics is their most powerful weapon."

He said that the youth with right to vote and do politics is more powerful than tanks and armoured vehicles because he can change the entire scenario which tank can't.

The PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said that we wonder why there is so much violence and barbarism in our society. The politics of religion and ethnicity get space because student unions were banned.

By banning student politics for their own benefit, some elements not only harmed the youth of country's academic institutions such as colleges and versities but also inflicted irreparable loss to the society.

He said that the ever escalating fee graph of educational institutions is naked to all eyes. The way the state is being run, and graduates are being deprived of jobs opportunities instead of creating job opportunities, the students will now speak and draw attention to such issues.

The PPP chairman said that cases of harassment are being reported from educational institutions, but it was a great injustice that those cases would be investigated by those who belonged to the same institution and they won't do justice at all.

He said that the fees graph is forced to be higher without taking the students on board. They also face similar injustice with regard to imposition of same curriculum is imposed across the country. "Student unions are our first step, and when the students are organised, they will fight for the solution of their problems, but if there is a PPP government, you will run the government yourself," he added.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, February 17^th, 2022.