After election in 2018, the PTI formed government and from day one, their ruling style was totally opposite to the tall promises made by them. The performance of the current government is of sheer incompetence and negligence while time is running out not only for our economy but also for the survival of the masses. Instead of addressing these issues, the federal government continues to spend its energy in charging and threatening opponents on corruption.
On the 6th of January, 2022, chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party Bilawal Bhutto Zardari announced a long march against the failed and anti-people polices of government, since then government and government-backed media, journalists and even other opposition parties started media trial and character assassination of PPP, and blamed to have struck a deal with establishment/military generals. Approval of the State Bank’s amendment bill is a clear example of this aggression.
This wasn’t the first time this happened, but the result was always different. There are three prominent examples of these.
Firstly, when General Zia, the “military dictator”, overthrew the government on the 5th of July, 1977, and held an elected prime minister, Shaheed Zulifkar Ali Bhutto, in jail. At that time, anti-PPP settlements propagated that SZAB had struck a deal and will fly away but SZAB accepted assassination instead of running away. T. W. Rajaratnam, former Judge of the Supreme Appellate Court of Sri Lanka wrote in his book, ‘A Judiciary In Crisis’: “Never during the appeal or thereafter did Bhutto ask for mercy. In fact, he had strictly instructed his lawyers and the members of his family that no such application should be made.”
Second, in the last years of the Musharraf regime, the same anti-minded people had blamed the PPP that Benazir Bhutto had struck a deal with the dictator. On May 27th, 2007, in a TV interview with Arnab Goswami, Shaheed Benazir had dismissed the idea of any backroom deal with the General, but propagators hadn’t stopped propagating aginst her, and the world witnessed the assassination of the first female Prime Minster of the Muslim World. On October 24th, 2007, Dawn published, “Pakistan People’s Party chairperson Benazir Bhutto has received assassination threats from a terrorist while there were reports on Tuesday that the government has put her name on the Exit Control List, to which the PPP has taken seriously.”
Third, former President of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari, spent 14 years from 1990 to 2004 in jail on various charges but was never convicted. To pile pressure on the PPP, Asif Ali Zardari was again arrested in 2019, facing conspired cases and media trials but never struck deal like his opponent to leave the country.
The PPP is the party of the masses, which always sides with the poorer against tyrants not even afraid to risk their lives. People should have to acknowledge the sacrifices that the PPP and its leadership has given for the country, stopping themselves for being part of such propaganda.
