LAHORE: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Wednesday dared Prime Minister Imran Khan to dissolve the National Assembly and announce a fresh election if he believed the public was still on his side.

“Imran is a coward and is running away from elections,” the PPP chairman roared while addressing party workers in Multan. He said Imran Khan would not dissolve the assembly because he did not have any public support.

Commenting on the disqualification of Senator Faisal Vawda by Election Commission, Mr Bilawal used cricket jargon and said the “wickets of Kaptan” had started falling and the process would be expedited when the party would start its long march on Islamabad.

He said the central executive committee (CEC) of the party had decided to start the march against incompetent and selected government from Karachi on Feb 27.

Bilawal said the PPP had declared a war on the “selected” government of Imran and exposed him on the very first day in the National Assembly by calling him ‘selected’, and the party again exposed it at the time of the budget.

He said “friends” in the opposition parties wanted to give Imran a free hand in the by-elections, but the PPP announced it would contest the polls.

“The world witnessed how Imran lost all by-elections from Karachi to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.”

He said Imran ran away from a by-election in Lahore and again tried to run away from the election of the mayor in Dera Ismail Khan, where the PPP’s Faisal Karim Kundi is candidate.

Bilawal appreciated the ECP and the judiciary for not postponing the second phase of the local elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

He said it was an irony that Imran kept repeating “corruption mantra” over the last three years, but his own government had been declared as “the most corrupt government” in Pakistan’s history by the Transparency International.

On the occasion, a former UC chairman from NA-157, Rana Sajjad Hussain, announced joining the party. He is said to be a relative of a PML-N senator.

According to our Muzaffargarh correspondent, Bilawal will address a party convention at the Gilani House in Multan on Thursday (today).

He is expected to visit Khar Gharbi, the residence of former MNA late Malik Noor Rabbani Khar, who died recently.

Published in Dawn, February 10th, 2022