- PPP chairman criticises PTI for closing down Begum Nusrat Bhutto Cancer Programme
Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairperson Bilawal Bhutto has accused Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government of being involved in widespread corruption in the province.
“Your own ministers are alleging that Imran’s kitchen and Jehangir Tareen’s plane operate financially on Pakhtunkhwa’s contracts,” he said, accusing the provincial government of financial corruption.
“Whenever you take up the stage, you tell the people a new lie,” he said, referring to the PTI chairman, while addressing a political gathering here on Saturday. He criticised the PTI chief for closing down the Begum Nusrat Bhutto Cancer Programme initiated by the PPP government.
“Name it after Shaukat Khanum if you have an objection on its name. This was a programme for those who cannot find a place in your cancer hospital,” Bilawal said. He dismissed the impression that the PTI had a role to play in ending extremism.
“It was you [Imran] who gave millions to their [Taliban’s] madrassah from education’s budget,” he said. “Have you ever spoken against terrorists,” he asked the PTI chairman. “You are scared of even condemning them,” he said.
“Do you think the nation has forgotten that it was you who offered the Taliban to open an office in Pakistan,” he pointed out. “Khan Sahab, 2018 will be my first and your last election,” he again told the PTI chairman.
“You keep on praising your Ehtisab Commission for arresting a sitting minister. What about the accusations made by that sitting minister on the chief minister,” he asked. He said that his party was a federal party which cares about development in the entire country.
He strongly criticised Nawaz Sharif’s recent rally on the Grand Trunk Road. “You can be a conspirator, you can be mischievous but you cannot be a revolutionary,” he said. “Nawaz Sharif is talking about destroying institutions to protect himself,” he claimed.
He said that he (Nawaz) only looked towards the parliament when he got in trouble. Reminding the Hazara people of PPP’s efforts for the betterment of the region, Bilawal asked the people to vote for his party in 2018 elections, promising to not let them down.
He promised employment for the young, equal opportunities for women and a progressive Pakistan if PPP was led into power by the people. Senior PPP leaders Sherry Rehman, Nayyar Bukhari and Faisal Karim were also accompanying the party chairman on the occasion.
BHUTTO’S PAKISTAN: Addressing the gathering, opposition leader in National Assembly Syed Khurshid Shah said that the Pakistan People’s Party would make the country Bhutto’s Pakistan. He said that politics of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif had been brought up under the dictator Ziaul Haq and he laid foundation of politics of lies.
He said that farmers, labourers and poor masses of the country were deprived of basic rights due to self-directed policies of the ruling party. He said that his party’s politics gives equal rights to all citizens. PPP’s founding chairman Zulfikar Ali Bhutto always considered farmers, labourers and poor masses as his real strength and asset, he said.
The PPP leader thanked the people of Mansehra for extending warm welcome to Bilal Bhutto and said that slain PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto had said that she would live and die with the masses and the party was following her agenda. Today Bilawal Bhutto was committed to fulfil the desires of his mother, he added.
Shah said that PPP politics comprises truth and its struggle was not aimed to get the Prime Minister’s Office but to endow masses with their inborn rights and resolving the problems faced accordingly.
