Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Wednesday challenged Prime Minister Imran Khan to vacate his seat and announce snap elections if he was confident that people will vote for him again but added that the "coward" prime minister will not do that.
Addressing a ceremony at the Dera of Rana Sajjad Hussain in Multan, he said that his party was all set to hold the long march, scheduled for February 27, against the "incompetent" rulers and will take the prime minister head-on after reaching Islamabad."Imran Khan has been lecturing us... today, I challenge him that if he's not a coward then leave the prime minister's post and announce the election date... we will not need to carry out the protest march then," he added.
Bilawal further added that if Imran Khan was so confident that the people were going to vote for him again then he should announce early elections, “but he knows that the people were fed up with him”.
He said that even after three years in power, PM Imran was still harping on his corruption mantra and people have stopped listening to the same record again and again.
The PPP chairman was referring to PM Imran’s speech he delivered as he launched the Sehat Insaf Card in Faisalabad earlier today. He came down hard on Bilawal for refusing to implement the health card scheme in Sindh.
PPP government in Sindh, the premier said, did not realise in what conditions the people of rural Sindh were living in, adding that the former president, Asif Ali Zardari, was buying off politicians with “stolen wealth”.
According to PM Imran, he only joined politics to rid the country of these two “corrupt families” as Pakistan has no future till "these people are in power". He said the rule of law and a welfare state were the only ways that Pakistan could progress, adding that some lawyers, however, wanted former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who “looted” the country, back in power.
“They want the lifetime ban on him revoked so that he can return to power and plunder it again,” the PM said, adding that states are not destroyed with bombs but making crimes like corruption acceptable.
The premier also commented on recent contacts between the opposition parties, saying they were holding meetings because they “are afraid of Imran Khan”. "They know I will put them in jail eventually," he added.
Bilawal, while responding to the prime minister’s scathing attack, said: "They [the hybrid regime] tried to create false [corruption] cases against us but they're yet to prove anything in court”. “According to Transparency International, Pakistan’s most corrupt government is currently sitting at the Centre,” he added.The PPP chairman said that during the tenure of former army chief General (retd) Pervez Musharraf, “many such cases were created against us but we were innocent then and we are also innocent now”.
"Benazir Bhutto was declared innocent and the dictator has been declared a criminal by the courts... the people of Pakistan will never forgive Imran Khan [for what he has done]," he remarked.
He further said that his party will continue to protest against the "selected" rulers until the people of Pakistan are relieved from such incompetent people.