Election campaign: Hamza Shahbaz hopes to win by-elections

Urges traders, youth to vote responsibly.

GUJRANWALA:

“The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz will win all the seats in the by-elections on December 4. The victory will pave the way for its success in the general elections,” PML-N MNA Hamza Shahbaz said on Wednesday.

He was addressing party workers, the Gujranwala Chamber of Commerce and Industry leaders and traders at a farm house in PP-92.

He said the country’s enemies were plotting to create the kind of conditions that will allow them to declare it a failed state. He said the youth were the driving force behind the PML-N.

He said it was time the voters realised the importance of their vote and used it responsibly. He said people should only trust candidates who respected their mandate and kept their promises.



He said PML-N’s political opponents had resorted to recrimination and smearing seeing the PML-N’s increasing popularity. However, the PML-N leadership, he said, was unaffected by the opposition.

He said the PML-N planned to launch several economic and business projects to spur the economy.

He said the PML-N-led government had created employment opportunities and launched several projects for industrial development and infrastructure improvement.

“If the people give us one more chance, we will put the economy back on track,” he said.

He said innocent blood was being spilt in Balochistan and Karachi.

He said the federal government today had become “a bunch of beggars holding their begging bowls before international donors”.

He said during Nawaz Sharif’s term as prime minister, then former Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpaee had visited Lahore and acknowledged Pakistan’s independence and sovereignty. The government today, he said, had congratulated the US on its successful Abbottabad operation.

He said when PML-N’s government was ousted in 1999, the National Accountability Bureau officials would call him and make him wait for as much as five hours. He said some of them had told him that Pervez Musharraf had directed them to dig up evidence of corruption by Nawaz Sharif, but they could not find anything.



By casting their votes wisely, he said, the trading community could play their role in defeating the corrupt politicians.

He said corrupt people in the government today will have to return what they had looted from the national exchequer. MNAs Dastgeer Khan, Shahin Ishfaq, MPA Shaukat Manzoor Cheema, Ashraf Ansari, City General Secretary Taufeeq Butt, District President Mustansir Gondal and District Secretary General Shazia Ishfaq were also present.

Later Hamza Shahbaz also attended a dinner hosted by the traders’ union.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 22^nd, 2012.