Daily Times

Pakistan People’s Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Wednesday said Prime Minister Imran Khan himself, and not the opposition, is talking about ‘minus one’ formula, adding that ‘democracy is under threat from Imran Khan and his ego’.

“We never talked about minus one but Imran Khan himself is talking about it,” the PPP chairman told a press conference here. “PTI government is on a vilification campaign against Sindh government because Sindh is the only province which has shown governance,” he said. “Imran Khan does not have a mandate, he is a selected prime minister and his mandate is fake, which can evaporate any time,” he added, and hoped that PML-N will also endorse PPP’s stance.

Bilawal said Pakistan is grappling with ‘historical’ challenges in the form of the virus outbreak, locust attacks, a weak economy and monsoon rains but instead of making improvements, the PTI is making the situation worse. He said he had challenged Prime Minister Imran Khan to a debate on Covid-19 and the economy, but the premier was not ready to face him in the parliament and left after delivering his own speech. “His problem is that he is not ready to become the country’s PM, he is glad to be the PM of the PTI and their Facebook and Twitter,” he said. “We need a serious adult who can tackle the serious issues being faced by the country, who can understand what a pandemic is and take steps to deal with it,” he added.

Bilawal also said Prime Minister Imran has yet to issue a clarification for referring to slain Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden as ‘martyred’. “You said this on the floor of the house under oath, and in the US you say that [American forces] killed him on a tip provided by the ISI,” he said. “If Osama bin Laden is a martyr then what is your stance on APS [attack] and operation Zarb-i-Azb?”

The PPP chairman held the PTI government responsible for the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) being barred from operating flights to European countries, saying the government wants to sell off the national flag carrier’s assets based on ‘lies’. He said PIA’s permit to fly to EU countries was suspended because Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan accused its pilots of holding dubious licences ‘without any evidence’. “The minister whose own degree is fake … levelled this type of allegation against our pilots without any evidence [leading to] them being banned across the world. No one has caused this type of damage to PIA in history as this government,” he said, adding that government officials failed to realise that pilots are required to sit an exam and renew their licence every six months and they do not necessarily require a degree to operate flights.

Speaking about the Covid-19 situation in the country, Bilawal said the impression being given by some officials that Pakistan’s coronavirus curve is flattening is a ‘blatant lie’. “Some people who have not read anything about the virus are saying that the curve is flattening; this is a blatant lie,” he said. “The worse is yet to come; the curve would only flatten if you had taken steps to flatten it,” he added.