KARACHI, June 26: The Pakistan People’s Party-Shaheed Bhutto has mulled over drastic changes in its manifesto, proposing among several other things free of charge education and health facilities for people and land for rural and suburban population of the country.

The party’s central committee, which met at Al-Murtaza House in Larkana on June 24, 25 under its chairperson Ghinwa Bhutto, said the draft manifesto was aimed at changing the structure of governance and making Pakistan a viable state.

The draft envisaged liberating people from internal and external enslavement and aimed at achieving objectives by disapproving present ruling elite and empowering people at the lowest level of government hierarchy, it said.

The meeting said that the draft laid stress on implementing the land reforms announced by the government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in 1977, which had been put on the back burner after Gen Zia’s martial law, and proposed providing seeds, fertilisers and pesticides to farmers at low cost.

The draft envisioned a criminal justice system in which the decision on guilty or not guilty would be taken by a panel of citizens trusted by both the defence and the prosecution.

The police should be put under the administration of the locally-elected councillors of a cluster of villages, union councils, towns and cities, it proposed.

The meeting said that the alarming economic and social conditions in the country were a direct result of protracted neglect during last eight years by the government of Prime Minister Shuakat Aziz and President Musharraf, and the previous successive governments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.

The committee held the previous government responsible for shortage of wheat and high prices of essential commodities and said that the government elected in Feb 2008 had also failed to stem the tide of rising inflation and unemployment.

It severely criticised the 2008-09 budget, which it said was for the ruling elite by the ruling elite. The peasants, labourers, teachers, low-salaried government servants and journalists had no share at all in the budget, which had raised their level of poverty and deprived them of any cash to buy food, pay rent or get medical assistance, the meeting said.

The committee paid tribute to valiant struggle of legal fraternity and acknowledged that the non-political struggle had infused a new sense of awakening among masses.

The party praised media for playing positive role in creating awareness and expressed regret over delay in the murder case of late chairman of the party, Mir Murtaza Bhutto and his colleagues.

The meeting condemned the government for extending what it called undue concession to police officers involved in the Murtaza-murder case.

The party’s deputy general secretary Umar Sial, president of the party’s Sindh chapter Meenhon Khan Rind and other leaders attended the meeting. —PPI