Daily Times

PPP Chairman and Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said on Sunday that the conspiracy to oust the PTI government was not hatched inside the White House, as claimed by PTI chairman and former premier Imran Khan, but was prepared inside Bilawal House, a private TV channel reported.

“Now this selected says it was a foreign conspiracy. It’s not a foreign conspiracy, it was a democratic action. It was the struggle of PPP workers, it was the success of Constitution and parliamentary democracy,” Bilawal told a rally in Karachi.

“Democracy has won, all four provinces have won. We have sent the selected, puppet and incompetent prime minister home,” said Bilawal. He said that his jiyalas are “always successful” when they come out for the protection of the Constitution and take on the dictator of the time. He added that his supporters started their movement when Imran Khan came to power. “We were standing against this undemocratic person since day one. We looked into his eyes and said you were not elected but selected. We faced injustice but did not sell our principles,” said Bilawal.

He said it was the PPP’s efforts that led to the formation of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) – an alliance of former opposition parties. “Forgetting our political differences, together with other parties, we formed the PDM and on September 20, 2020, when we laid the basis for PDM, we had clearly said we would do long marches and protests and that we would also struggle inside parliament and send the PTI government home through a vote of no-confidence,” Bilawal recalled.

Firing a broadside at PTI Chairman Imran Khan, Bilawal alleged that the former prime minister “wanted every institution to turn into his tiger force”. He went on to say that when he began his long march, he asked Khan to dissolve the assembly but he was under the influence of power and did not listen to the then Opposition.

Bilawal said that the then Opposition submitted the no-confidence motion against Khan when his caravan reached Islamabad. He said at first PPP’s allies did not agree on an in-house change but “in politics you have to convince everyone and it is the leader’s responsibility to show the way,” Bilawal said. “So we convinced others, we practically showed our allies and made them understand not to resign from parliament. When our stance was accepted, the selected government lost all by-elections, proving that their mandate was false and that they had come to the helm through selection.”

Bilawal said the time had come to take “difficult decisions” for Pakistan’s benefit to rescue it from the current economic crisis.

“Now the time has come to take those difficult decisions in the country’s favour so we can take it out of an economic crisis,” the foreign minister said. He said the government had two options in front of it: to maintain short-term relief and thrust the people into long-term problems, or “we bear short-term pain and arrange long-term relief.” “We have to take those difficult decisions through which we can take the economy out of the crisis created by [Imran] Khan,” the PPP chairman said, adding that solutions could be found by working together. Meanwhile, Bilawal said China’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic by adopting a dynamic zero-Covid approach had set high standards for the world. “The way the leadership of China relies on science and facts, and is still doing everything possible to ensure safety and health of every single citizen has set excellent standards internationally,” the foreign minister told Xinhua.