The country’s political landscape sizzled on Thursday as PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s fiery campaign rally in Gujrat drew sharp retorts from the PML-N leadership, as both sides went beyond the Barbs in bid to set a fierce contest in the coming general elections.
This heated exchange during their separate election rallies, underscored the intensifying campaigning for the February 8 elections. Bilawal’s populist promises and attacks on rivals aim to mobilise the masses, while PML-N seeks to reclaim their development-oriented image.
Seeking to woo voters with promises of a “democratic and pro-people government,” Bilawal, in a speech in Gujrat, launched scathing attacks on both PML-N and PTI, urging their supporters to “strategically” vote for the PPP on the election day.
Championing the common man, Bilawal prioritised tackling inflation, unemployment, and poverty through a 10-point “Awami Economic Charter”. He pledged to double incomes, provide free electricity to the underprivileged, empower women with interest-free loans, and build houses.
“These 10 promises to the people need to be conveyed at every doorstep,” Bilawal told the supporters. The right to vote is the power of the people, and this is what the people of Punjab need to be apprised of,” he said, highlighting the party’s electoral agenda.
In a bid to sway PML-N workers, Bilawal accused the party of being reverting back to days of military dictator Gen Ziaul Haq and the IJI – a reference to the anti-PPP electoral alliance formed in the late 1980s under the name of Islami Jamhoori Ittehad.
“This is the same old PML-N of dictator Ziaul Haq and the IJI,” Bilawal said. “If the PML-N workers want democracy and the sanctity of their votes, they should stamp on the [PPP’s election] symbol of the arrow, because the tiger [PML-N’s election symbol] sucks the blood of the downtrodden,” he added.
To PTI voters, he offered a strategic collaboration: vote for the PPP's arrow to stop the "tiger" and prevent Nawaz Sharif's fourth premiership. If given the opportunity on February 8, he said, he would book the tickets for them [Sharifs] on February 9 to send them to their Avenfield apartments in London.
Undeterred, PML-N President Shehbaz Sharif launched a stinging counteroffensive. He mocked Bilawal's pledge of releasing political prisoners by asking him to "first free those held captive in his personal jails” in his home province.
“I advise him to first bring his personal jails to an end where prisoners including children are being held captive and subjected to torture,” he told a PML-N election rally in Mandi Bahauddin. He emphasised that there were no political prisoners in Punjab during the PML-N’s government from 2013 to 2018.
Shehbaz refuted Bilawal's claims of PML-N's anti-democratic past, highlighting their 2013-18 tenure was marked by development projects like motorways and Danish Schools. At the same time, he painted a picture of conspiracies that plagued Nawaz Sharif's government.
When Nawaz Sharif came to power in 2013, conspiracies were hatched against his government in the form of a sit-in and he was ousted from the premiership in 2017. He recalled the cancellation of Chinese president's visit in 2014 because of the sit-in staged by the PTI in Islamabad.
“There was verbal abuse in Islamabad, sit-ins as well as talk of setting fire to parliament,” Shehbaz said, adding: “The nation has not forgotten all that.” He stressed that the PML-N government brought an end to power outages as well as delivered by providing several development projects.
In his speech, Bilawal pointed out that the PPP was the only party so far, which was campaigning and had presented a programme for the people. He warned the rivals that they should not be so sure about the election outcome.
“The people should come out in historic numbers on February 8 and stamp on the arrow. If the people of Punjab and other parts of the country decide to stop them, nothing can prevent them [the masses] from achieving their objective,” he said.
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