LAHORE: PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari continued with his acrimonious campaign against the PML-N, saying he won’t accept one person coming into power again and again.

While he didn’t name anyone, his apparent target was PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif, whose party is vying to form the government for the fourth time after the Feb 8 general elections.

“We don’t accept one person again and again. The people of Pakistan have to decide who should be their prime minister,” the PPP leader said on Sunday while addressing a gathering on the eve of opening his election offices in the National Assembly’s constituency NA-127 in Lahore.

Doubling down on his remarks, the PPP leader claimed he would beat those people in their home who had been “imposed on Punjab by the former dictator Ziaul Haq”.

“The people who have been imposed on Punjab by Gen Zia ask us why we have come to contest elections from Lahore. We ask them why they came here. Gen Zia and Gen Hameed Gul imposed them, and we tell them we’ll beat them in their home with the power of votes.”

Says he won’t accept one person in power again and again

Lahore neither belongs to any businessman nor any sportsman, Mr Bhutto-Zardari said, as he also targeted his other political rival, PTI’s Imran Khan.

He said his grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and mother, Benazir Bhutto, had been contesting elections from Lahore, and he was following their suit.

While referring to his party’s workers, the PPP leader said he was doing “the politics of jiyalas” and didn’t need support from anywhere else. “[These] jiyalas neither bow down nor retreat out of fear.”

Urging the party workers to take PPP’s election manifesto to the doorsteps of voters, he promised to fight inflation and unemployment by implementing his 10-point manifesto.

Under the manifesto, he said the salaries of government employees would be doubled, while poor families would receive 300 units of free electricity each month.

The medical treatment for the poor would also be free of cost, he claimed.

Criticising the opponents, the PPP leader said when “these people” fall sick, they go to London for treatment.

He promised that if voted to power, he would build houses for three million Pakistanis, expand the social welfare scheme, Benazir Income Support Programme, issue cards to factory workers and farmers for financial benefits and introduce schemes at the union council level to eliminate hunger.

Responding to a query about rumours of a possible delay in general elections, Mr Bhutto-Zardari said elections would not be postponed.

Published in Dawn, January 8th, 2024