File photo of PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari
Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, who is also the foreign minister, on Tuesday reiterated warnings that an “intervention” may be on the cards if the prevailing crises are not resolved.
Addressing a gathering at Naudero House in Larkana to mark the 44th death anniversary of his grandfather and PPP founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, he warned that neither Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, nor Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Imran Khan would rule over the country, adding that the people of Pakistan would have to bear the consequences.
Maintaining that Khan had brought to power in 2018 through rigging, Bhutto-Zardari vowed that the incumbent government would not permit the electoral process to be sabotaged in the 2023 general elections. Claiming that the ruling coalition was aware of the “game” being played, he reiterated demands for the Supreme Court to form a full court bench to hear pending cases. “The battle for Takht-i-Lahore (throne of Lahore) will sink the country,” he lamented.
The PPP chairman recalled that his father, Asif Ali Zardari, had filed a presidential reference over the judicial murder of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 2014, he regretted that it had yet to heard by the Supreme Court, even as the Constitution framed by his grandfather was repeatedly violated. Criticizing the judiciary’s role in providing cover to illegitimate steps, he said the coups of both General Zia and General Musharraf had been declared legitimate by the same courts that had come out against the democratic government of his mother, Benazir Bhutto.
Similarly, he recalled that former chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry was one of the judges who had legitimized Musharraf’s coup, while also being the judge who had de-seated a democratically elected prime minister—Yousaf Raza Gilani—for allegedly violating the Constitution. Alleging that “judicial dictatorship” had been launched by Iftikhar Chaudhry, he said it was continuing to this day in the form of a “one-man show,” a reference to a recent SC order that had criticized the chief justice of Pakistan’s unfettered powers of bench formation.