Election results controversial, still PPP supports govt, says Khursheed

Published November 10, 2018
Senior Pakis­tan Peoples Party (PPP) lea­der Syed Khurs­heed Shah. — AFP/File
Senior Pakis­tan Peoples Party (PPP) lea­der Syed Khurs­heed Shah. — AFP/File

SUKKUR: Senior Pakis­tan Peoples Party (PPP) lea­der Syed Khurs­heed Shah has said that his party still has reservations over res­ults of the recent general elections in the country but it will continue to extend its cooperation to the elected government in the greater interest of the country and nation.

“We want to see that issues of the general public are resolved, no matter who resolves them,” he said.

He said PPP believed that the ruling party should be allowed to fulfil the commitments it had made to the masses during its election campaign.

Mr Shah was speaking at a ceremony organised by the Hindu community in Kan­dhra town near Sukkur on Friday to celebrate Diwali.

“We stand by our stance that the [recent] general elections are controversial and so we have reservations over the results. However, we also realise that the dispensation emerging from the results is better than dictatorship.

As such, we extend our cooperation to the government in the interest of the general public and hope that people’s issues will be resolved,” said Mr Shah.

The senior PPP leader said that all that the masses expected from the government was peace and prosperity. “If an entity succeeds in achieving the goal by ending poverty, unemployment and crime in the country, we will not have any objection even if it [the entity] is our enemy,” he added.

He said PPP did not want to rule over the country but it was eager to see the country becoming a developed one and the nation getting prosperous.

Khursheed Shah took exception to the use of offe­n­ding language and rem­arks by rival political parties against one another, saying that the PPP did not believe in such dirty politics. He said no good could be earned by abusing others.

Commenting on the government’s success in getting foreign and IMF loans, Mr Shah said this had only further indebted the country. “Every child [of Pakistan] has now become debtor of Rs150,000 as against the previously Rs60,000 to Rs70,000.

He said the PPP under the chairmanship of Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari was following the politics of its founder chairman Zulfikar Ali Bhu­tto and assassinated chairperson Benazir Bhutto.

“Z.A. Bhutto laid the foun­dation of democracy and his daughter Benazir Bhutto revived it after dictatorship undermined it ... PPP rendered great sacrifices to protect the democratic system and see it flourishing.”

Published in Dawn, November 10th, 2018

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