NAWABSHAH: Pakistan Peoples Party co-chairman and former Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari on Sunday described his close rivals in politics as immature and without a vision.

“I will be in the driving seat [again] and make them learn how the country’s affairs are run [appropriately]”, he vowed while speaking to party workers from Nawabshah (city and taluka chapters) here at Zardari House.Clearly alluding to ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif and Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chief Imran Khan, Mr Zardari said “our rivals lacking a vision caused collapse of the system and governance. He said the next general election would not be the “RO election” like the previous one; there won’t be “selection” either, but “election”, he added.

Those claiming today that PPP had lost its popularity in Punjab would come to realise its strength in that province as well as its power to contest in the next general election, he said.

Mr Zardari said that children of rival parties’ leaders lived away from the country and nobody knew whether even their bodies would be brought back here for burial. “But we and our children live in Pakistan and will remain here,” he added.

He told party workers to start preparing for the election. In a lighter vein, he said it was much easier to propose oneself for a marriage than ask for a vote.

The PPP co-chairman also observed that people had become more logical thanks to the social media because they would remain updated about every development and they knew who was doing what.

Mr Zardari also criticised the federal government saying that its flawed policies had badly damaged the national economy. “Pakistan’s exports today show around 50 per cent decline as compared to the volume registered during my tenure as president,” he claimed.

Mr Zardari told the workers that he had never even thought that Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto would leave us all of a sudden and the party’s responsibility would fall on his shoulders. “I accepted and fulfilled the responsibility and at the same time I trained Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari in handling the party’s affairs,” he added.

Mr Zardari repeated his decision to contest from Nawabshah in the next general election and said his daughter Aseefa Bhutto-Zardari would also be contesting from here. He pledged that Nawabshah would be made an “education city”, and pointed out that establishment of the Bakhtawar Cadet College for Girls and many other educational institutions had already been planned.

He advised the workers not to take the election easy as anti-PPP forces had joined hands. “It won’t be easy even for me to contest the election unless you (workers) maintained and gained the strength; we together will fight and win,” he said.Mr Zardari also recounted PPP’s achievements, saying that it was the only party that had introduced the law for women empowerment and stood for their rights. It’s PPP that had brought Sherry Rehman as the Leader of the Opposition in Senate and Krishna Kolhi, belonging to a poor family of Thar, to the upper house.

MNA Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho, Sindh Minister for Law and Prisons Ziaul Hassan Lanjar, Nawabshah Municipal Committee chairman Haji Azeem Mughal, PPP district president Ali Akbar Jamali and city general secretary Syed Atif Hussain Zaidi, Khan Bahadur Bhatti, Ashiq Zardari and other elected representatives were also present

Published in Dawn, April 9th, 2018