Daily Times

Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said on Saturday that institutions did not belong to one person but to the people, adding that “I hope they [the institutions] will not make themselves controversial for a single person”. Addressing a public gathering in Parachina, Bilawal said Prime Minister Imran Khan wanted state institutions to operate as his party’s Tiger Force as he made it clear that “we will not allow anyone to make our institutions controversial for one person.” “Imran violates the Constitution and the democracy. He doesn’t want the rule of law in Pakistan. He rather wants all institutions to work like his Tiger Force,” Bilawal claimed. He said Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government was over and the premier was “retreating like a coward”. Further criticising the premier, the PPP chairperson said that Imran Khan used to say that he would “commit suicide” rather than approach the International Monetary Fund (IMF). “But as soon as he became the prime minister, he went knocking on the IMF’s door,” the PPP chairman stated.

Laying in to the premier, Bilawal while referring to Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)’s pre-election slogans of providing jobs to the people, said that, “Imran Khan had promised that people would come to Pakistan for employment; that did not happen. He has, in fact, rendered jobless even those who live in this country.” “We never recognised this rigged government,” Bilawal stated, adding that “Imran Khan was not the prime minister of the Pakistani people but of someone else”. He said the premier had lost the majority and that his “rule was over”. The PPP chairman remarked that PM Imran and the West were on one-page regarding Pakistan’s foreign policy, and that is to “destroy the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) agreement”.

Imran Khan’s election in 2018 was rather a “selection”, the PPP chief said. “And after three years, after your hard work and struggle, if the selectors now feel that it is not their job to do the selection for such a position … the people of the country welcome this.”

Saying that his party’s struggle had been focused on the restoration of democracy, Bilawal added their demand was that all institutions worked within their constitutional and legal ambits. But, he noted, the state institutions did not belong to Imran Khan alone. The institutions, he said, were of entire Pakistan.

“And we will not let an institution become controversial for one person,” he remarked.