Federal ministers on Sunday lashed out at the PPP’s Sindh government accusing it of 15 years of “misrule” in the province while addressing the ruling PTI’s supporters in Shikarpur and Jacobabad as the party’s “Sindh Huqooq March” (Sindh’s rights march) passed through Larkana division.
Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, also the PTI’s vice president, said his party was ready for accountability of its 3.5-year rule, but the PPP would also have to give answers for what it had done in Sindh for the past 15 years.
He added that PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari had left Karachi for Islamabad in the form of a long march to hold Prime Minister Imran Khan accountable for his three and a half years rule.
“Our government is willing to give answers but in response, the PPP will also be held accountable for its continuous rule in Sindh since 2008.”
Praising PPP founder and former premier Zulfikar Ali Bhutto for being a true son of the soil and recalling the leadership qualities of its slain chairperson Benazir Bhutto, Qureshi asked the people to honestly say if the party being led by its co-chairperson Asif Ali Zardari was the same like the one before.
The minister also blamed Zardari for “engineering” his defeat in a National Assembly seat in Tharparkar district for which he contested in 2013 and 2018 polls.
“Today’s PPP has gone out of the hands of Bhuttos and now in Zardari’s control. In today’s politics, they buy loyalties and the people who do not surrender are intimidated through fear tactics.”He also recalled that when Benazir had wanted to elevate Qureshi as the PPP president, Zardari had opposed the decision and instead suggested the name of late Makhdoom Ahmed Mukhtar. However, he added, Benazir had went ahead with her decision.
He believed that the condition of Sindh reminded him of the situation in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa where its people until 2013 had become disappointed because of the unremitting misrule in their province.
However, he added, in 2013 they elected the PTI, which restored their hopes through its service delivery.
“In 2018, nobody could have thought that the PTI would receive support in Punjab against PML-N. But it happened and both Punjab and K-P voted for the PTI.”
Speaking on the occasion, Federal Planning and Development Minister Asad Umar, who is the general secretary of the PTI, maintained that Sindh’s people were really courageous for still smiling even after suffering 14 long years of Zardari’s cruel rule.
“Today, Bilawal has set off for the march. Someone should ask them why they are going to Islamabad,” he added.
He said almost all subjects concerned with lives of the ordinary people were devolved to the provinces after the 18th constitutional amendment.
Also read: PTI leaders slam PPP for plundering Sindh’s resources
He added that the Sindh government, consequently, was solely responsible for the health, education, agriculture, irrigation and a range of other services in the province.
“Almost all things related to the daily lives of the people and the means of creating livelihood are in the hands of the provincial government. Then why are they marching to Islamabad?”
Umar claimed that in the ongoing fiscal year, a sum of almost Rs2 trillion was being transferred from the Centre to the Sindh government.
He asked the people to question the provincial government as to where these billions of rupees were being spent because development was not evident in the province.
Federal Ports and Shipping Minister Ali Zaidi, who is also the PTI Sindh president, accused the province’s chief minister Murad Ali Shah of acting as the PPP leadership’s “personal servant”. He added that Zardari was ruling the province like a “mafia”.
He claimed that the PTI would form the next government in Sindh as it earlier did in K-P and Punjab, where the status quo politics was skeptical of the party’s victory.
He reiterated that the Sindh government was an obstacle in the way of the federal project of providing health cards to the people of the province.
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