Daily Times

Scion of the Bhutto family and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto, who brought a fresh appeal to the party ahead of the July 25 general elections, has won a seat in the lower house of the Parliament.

An Oxford alumni like his mother Benazir Bhutto and grandfather Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Bilawal defeated his opponent with a huge margin of 34,000 votes in NA-200 Larkana. Bilawal bagged 84,426 votes, while Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal’s Rashid Mahmood Soomro could secure only 50,200 votes.

Bilawal’s sister Aseefa Bhutto and his aunt Faryal Talpur were personally involved in the election campaign in NA-200. They visited several areas every day to seek votes for Bilawal, who was in the run for the first time. They were also joined by former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s sister, Sanam Bhutto, who especially flew in from London for the purpose.

As many as 19 candidates affiliated with various political parties contested the polls against Bilawal, whose main contender, Rashid Soomro, was the joint candidate of the MMA and the Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA). Soomro also happens to be the general secretary of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl’s (JUI-F) Sindh chapter.

On Wednesday, the PPP chairman complained of unnecessary delays in announcement of election results. “I have not received any official results from any constituency where I am contesting, despite it being past midnight. My candidates are also complaining that polling agents have been thrown out of polling stations across the country. Inexcusable and outrageous,” he tweeted.

Published in Daily Times, July 27^th 2018.