KARACHI: Pakistan Peoples Party chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari on Monday pledged to accomplish the mission of making Pakistan a welfare state and announced that he would resist all moves aimed at privatising Pakistan Steel and Pakistan International Airline.

Addressing a large gathering in Malir on the 49th founding day of the party from a truck, the PPP chairperson told them that they would find him amongst themselves just like his slain grandfather and slain mother in the struggle to build a peaceful and prosperous country.

Despite a security threat, Mr Bhutto-Zardari removed his security guards as he arrived in Memon Goth and reached the stage amid slogans of Jiye Bhutto, Jiye Shaheed Benazir and Jiye Bilawal after taking an aerial view of the massive gathering in a helicopter. Seated along with other party leaders Nisar Khuhro, Sherry Rahman, Akhunzada Chattan and Faisal Karim Kundi, the PPP chairperson was presented a traditional Baloch turban by Salman Abdullah Murad, son of slain PPP leader Abdullah Murad.

In his 30-minute speech, Mr Bhutto-Zardari said Pakistan needed a new approach, courage and enthusiasm which only the youth could provide. “I would like to tell political orphans that the struggle that was launched by Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto continues today. No one succeeded in the past nor will they succeed in future to make the PPP give up its ideology.

“They allege that the PPP has given up its ideology, but the political orphans should know that martial law, whippings, hangings and imprisonments, dividing people on the basis of sects, ethnicity and forming alliances of all PPP opponents failed to divert the party from its ideology,” he said, reiterating that the struggle against oppressors and terrorism would continue till the last terrorist was eliminated.

With the portraits of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto in the backdrop, Mr Bhutto-Zardari then raised the slogan: “Friends of terrorists and enemies of Pakistan are traitors”.

He said the PPP had been founded when interests of Pakistan were being bargained over and the war that Pakistan had won was being turned into a defeat, the poor people were deprived of their rights and their fate used to be decided by capitalists and feudal. These were the circumstances when the people responded to the clarion call of Zulfikar Bhutto by chanting the slogan of Jiye Bhutto. “Even today workers and oppressed and crippled classes looked towards PPP as the party that represents their aspirations,” he said, adding that the struggle for the rights of workers, women empowerment, and skilled youth would continue.

Earlier Sherry Rahman said Karachi was a bouquet of the country. “The PPP has achieved success in the interior of Sindh and now will also win the polls in Karachi. Those who say that the PPP has been restricted to Sindh only, should understand that PPP is the only force of the federation’s unity,” she said.

Nisar Khuhro, Mian Rashid Rabbani, Sajid Jokhyo, Najme Alam and Akhunzada Chattan also spoke.

Published in Dawn, December 1st, 2015