LAHORE: Refusing to accept manipulated elections in the future, the PPP has threatened to launch a “revolution or [transparent] election” movement.

“Despite having reservations over and protested against election results during the last couple of decades, the PPP has been accepting the subsequent governments. But from now on, we’ll accept only fair and transparent elections,” PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari told a workers’ convention here on Wednesday.

“The 2018 general elections were the last ‘selected’ election. If rigging is not stopped in future polls, we’ll go for ‘revolution or [transparent] election’ movement.” Urging the party workers to get ready for a “final fight”, he said they had the ability to send ‘the selected’ packing.

Welcoming, what he called historic, the recent court verdicts, Mr Bhutto-Zardari hoped the series of such democratic rulings would continue and victims of May 12, 2007, also get justice as well as killers of Benazir Bhutto and Nawab Akbar Bugti, and the Asghar Khan case decision implemented.

Referring to the restrictions on the media, he said neither politics nor masses or press was free and regretted that the media could broadcast interviews of “terrorists”, but not former president Asif Zardari.

He questioned the governance of the rulers while terrorism and treason cases were being registered against everyone, including student organisations, for trying to protest for their rights. “A person cannot even tweet in today’s Pakistan. If one dares so, he/she is disappeared.”

Mr Bhutto-Zardari said he had come to Lahore with a special message that the death anniversary of his mother would be observed in Liaquat Bagh, Rawalpindi — the city where Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had also been hanged.

Former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said the party cadre had been mobilised due to the visits of the chairman and hoped Mr Bhutto-Zardari would announce the future line of action for the workers at the Dec 27 public meeting in Rawalpindi.

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2019