Bilawal hails return of two-party system

PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has claimed that after “exclusion” of the PTI, the election contest is now between traditional political rivals—the PPP and the PML-N.

“Now that there is no Bat, the contest will be between the Arrow and the Lion,” Bilawal said while addressing a large public meeting at Mumtaz ground in Sindh’s Khairpur district on Sunday evening.

Traditionally, the PTI has used the election symbol 'Bat,' while the PPP and the PML-N have used 'Arrow' and 'Lion' respectively.

Bilawal was referring to a verdict of the Supreme Court which on Saturday deprived the PTI of its iconic election symbol while hearing a petition of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).

Read more: Bilawal pledges to build 3m houses

The SC order came as a major blow to the former ruling party which now cannot nominate its candidates for reserved seats while its candidates for general seats will now have to contest polls as independents.

During the speech, the PPP chief targeted PML-N supreme leader and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, claiming that the people of Sindh do not want to see him installed as the country's prime minister for the fourth time.

He claimed that Sindh's people have bad memories about Sharif when he was elected as the PM for the first, second and third times. "Why should we accept him as the PM for a fourth time? We will fight and we will hunt the lion," he said,

Also read: PPP 'sole contender in Punjab fray': Bilawal

He asked the party's workers and supporters to knock every single door in their towns and villages and to brief the people about the PPP’s 10-point charter of economy.

Bilawal vowed to bury the politics of revenge, hatred and divide once and for all if his party won a majority mandate in the country and formed the federal government. He reiterated that the PPP's foes are poverty, unemployment and inflation.

He argued that the other political parties neither have public oriented manifestos nor ideology. They do not even feel what hardships the people of Pakistan confront every day.

The PPP's leader cautioned that the PML-N wanted to roll back the 18th constitutional amendment and the National Finance Commission (NFC) award because the party believed that those landmark accomplishments have shrunken the federal coffers. "I say that funds were there but you stole them and the bureaucracy in Islamabad has occupied the resources."

He reassured the people that Rs300 billion being squandered on allegedly useless federal ministries and Rs1,500 billion being given under the garb of subsidies to the country's elite will be shelved. He added that all those funds will be directly channeled towards welfare of the peasants, laborers and youth.

The PPP's chairman once again drew a comparison between the public healthcare facilities in Sindh and Punjab, claiming that during his recent visit to Lahore he could not find any facility matching the services of Khairpur’s Gambat Institute of Medical Sciences.

He also compared former PM Imran Khan's promise of constructing five million homes for the poor people with the PPP's Sindh government's initiative of building two million houses for the people hit by floods in 2022.

He said the former plan existed only in slogans while the PPP's provincial government was able to materialize commencement of the latter in a short span of one year.

He promised that not only those two million houses will be built, but three million more houses for the poor people will also be constructed across the country if the PPP formed the central government.

Bilawal complained that the caretaker Sindh government has slowed down construction of homes and also the process of transferring ownership rights to the beneficiaries of such homes.

He protested that the development works initiated by the PPP's Sindh government have been stopped but the same works are continuing in Punjab.

"I want to tell every single officer who has snatched the right to own a house from the flood hit people and every single officer who kept making excuses to deny them ownership that I will personally hold them accountable," he warned.