ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has alleged that democracy is being weakened under a plan where the election process is getting replaced with “selection” to make people irrelevant in governance and decision-making affecting the very fate and future of the country.

This was stated by the PPP chairman without elaboration in a statement issued as a “message” on the International Day for Tolerance observed by the United Nations on Saturday.

He said the country was facing worst kind of intolerance in the modern days as “political weeds” and extremism which had been injected into national politics were damaging the whole society far from comprehension.

Mr Bhutto-Zardari said the PPP leadership had always promoted tolerance to create an egalitarian society based on justice, equality and peace.

PPP leader alleges efforts afoot to make people irrelevant in governance

“However, our founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was judicially murdered and the first elected woman prime minister of the Muslim world Benazir Bhutto was brutally assassinated,” he said.

The PPP chairman said that despite all these, his father and former president Asif Ali Zardari raised “Pakistan Khappay” slogan. Previously, he said, Mr Zardari had suffered 12 years in jail without any conviction and now he had been incarcerated for more than 150 days without registration of any FIR (first information report), reference and on mere hollow accusations.

He said the man who was the tallest symbol of tolerance in Pakistan had been deprived of a duly-required medical treatment, including access to his personal doctors while his health was worsening day by day.

Mr Bhutto-Zardari pointed out the PPP was promoting tolerance because it belonged to the segment of society that wanted their future generations to flourish in the country instead of those spreading intolerance here but dreaming to raise and settle their future generations elsewhere except in Pakistan.

Published in Dawn, November 17th, 2019