The 11-party opposition alliance Sunday reiterated its demand that Prime Minister Imran Khan should step down by January 31 or face the movement’s long march to Islamabad.
“If [PM] Imran does not resign by January 31, we will march on Islamabad,” Bilawal Bhutto said while addressing a rally at Garhi Khuda Bakhsh in Larkana on the occasion of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s 13th death anniversary. He asked party workers and supporters to get ready to march on Islamabad should PM Imran failed to resign and go home before January 31. “Get ready for long march to remove the selected and puppet prime minister,” he told the crowd. “You are mistaken if you think we will back off,” he said, adding that the government and any naysayers who think the opposition will back off need to look to the Bhutto’s mausoleum in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh. He recounted the struggles of his grandfather and his uncles, all who ‘sacrificed their lives’ but ‘did not sway from their democratic beliefs’. “Look at Benazir Bhutto’s life, spent in the service of the people,” he said.
“Today we have to vow to fulfil Benazir Bhutto’s promise and save Pakistan,” he said, adding that the country envisioned by the PPP leaders was one where the constitution ruled and everyone had equal rights. He said due to the government’s ‘anti-people’ policies, millions of people were forced to live below the poverty line and people couldn’t afford two meals a day, while youngsters were desperate to find jobs. “The rulers neither see your poverty nor your unemployment nor the storm of inflation,” the PPP leader said. “This puppet cannot provide bread and employment to people and says ‘I won’t leave anyone.’ But now the people fed up of unemployment, poverty and inflation will not leave this puppet, oppressor and selected,” he added.
Former president Asif Ali Zardari in his address said running a country is ‘not the same as managing a cricket team’. “It takes a different mindset to run a country and these people do not possess it,” he said. “This government will collapse on its own weight,” said Zardari, and challenged the government to hold elections and see who the people stand behind.
While addressing the rally, PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz once again hit out at the government over inflation and allegedly hiding behind the establishment, telling Prime Minister Imran Khan he was not fighting the PDM but the entire population of Pakistan. “Your war is not with PDM but with the 220 million people of Pakistan whom you have struck like lightning,” she said, while addressing the prime minister, adding that the people had ‘won’ this war.
Maryam said when Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari was unable to attend the PDM rally in Mardan, Prime Minister Imran was ‘jumping around with elation’ believing there had been a rift within the opposition. She claimed that he will say the same about this rally which JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman did not attend.
Maryam said it saddens her that Benazir Bhutto, the first female prime minister of the Muslim world, had to lay down her life during her struggle and for her beliefs. She said it is a pain that she too carries, along with the Bhutto family. Maryam recalled how, on that dark day, Nawaz Sharif was among the first to be notified and how he had embraced PPP leaders and shared their grief that day. She said she knows what it is to lose a mother.
National Party President Abdul Malik Baloch spoke of the parliament ‘being taken hostage’ and how farmers are ‘dying of hunger’. He also spoke out against what he termed the ‘occupation’ of the islands of Balochistan, saying that the people do not accept this.
Sardar Akhtar Mengal, Chief of Balochistan National Party Mengal Group, said, “We also have love for the soil of Sindh. Relations between Sindh and Balochistan predate Pakistan.” He said that even ‘dictatorship’ has been unable to put a dent in these ties.
