Daily Times

Karachi: Pakistan People’s Party will hold a rally in Naudero to mark the 39th death anniversary of its founding chairman Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto on Wednesday (today).

PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari will lead the rally that will begin at 2pm.

The PPP leadership is expected to hold a meeting of the party’s central executive committee after the rally at Naudero House. Matters pertaining to the political and security situation of the country will be discussed in the meeting. The CEC will also deliberate on the party’s strategy for the upcoming general elections.

By Tuesday evening, caravans of PPP workers from across the country were still arriving in Larkana to participate in events planned by the party for Bhutto’s death anniversary.

The PPP has set up two camps, one in Larkana and the other in Garhi Khuda Baksh where Bhutto and his three children – former prime minister Shaheed Benazir Bhutto, Shaheed Mir Murtaza Bhutto, and Shaheed Shahnawaz Bhutto – and his wife Nusrat Bhutto are buried.

The party has also set up camps along the way to the shrine where drinking water has been arranged to facilitate workers travelling from far off areas.

The Sindh government has announced a public holiday across the province on Wednesday.

According to a notification issued by the provincial government, all offices, autonomous and semi-autonomous bodies as well as corporations and local councils, except for essential services, under the administrative control of the provincial government will remain closed on the day.

Bhutto was executed on April 4, 1979, in what is widely considered to be a judicial murder, following the imposition of martial law by General Ziaul Haq.

Separately, Bilawal said on Tuesday that the nation still felt the pain of Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s loss and will continue to do so for ages to come.

He said those who took the life of the great leader had been relegated to the dustbin of history.

Paying tribute to the founding chairman of the party on his 39th death anniversary, Bilawal Bhutto said that Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto gave a vibrant, unanimous and strong structure of the state through 1973 Constitution.

“Two years later, he united the Muslim world as a global force to reckon with and emerged as international visionary leader.”

He said that Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto laid foundations of a true democracy with equal suffrage and launched both macro-economic and micro-economic projects to uplift the whole country and its citizens without any discrimination.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari further pointed out that Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was aware of maintaining the regional security balance and launched nuclear programme for an impregnable defence of the country a couple of years after he got freed 90,000 Pakistani troopers held as prisoners of war (POW) from Indian camps and recovered occupied Pakistani territory back through his diplomatic skills.

He said that the martyred PPP founder inspired the whole nation and brought out politics from the drawing rooms to the streets among the people, ‘taking ayes from the whole nation for all the major decisions’.

“Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto initiated mega projects like Pakistan Steel, Mechanical and Aeronautical Complexes, Port Qasim and score of other industrial units of immense importance at the time,” reminded Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.

“He was a friend of the poor, downtrodden and voiceless,” he said. “He enlightened peasants, industrial workers, women, students and common man about their importance and their right of franchise”. “They were the legitimate fountainhead of the political power,” the PPP chairman said.

Published in Daily Times, March 04^th 2018.