Bilawal terms PTI rally a face-saving flop show

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman and Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari Saturday said that the Rawalpindi public meeting of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Chairman Imran Khan was PTI’s face-saving flop show and it was anticlimactic. 

He added Imran’s announcement of the party’s resigning from all the assemblies was a “resignation drama in frustration.” “Unable to pull revolution crowds, failed at undermining appointments of new chiefs, frustrated resorts to resignation drama,” he said through a tweet following Imran’s speech.

Bilawal said Imran’s demand from Rawalpindi was not freedom (Azadi) but to be re-selected.

He questioned that for how long will Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab be used as political props.

PPP Secretary General Farhatullah Babar said that by announcing to quit the assemblies, Imran confessed that all his plans had failed. “The National Assembly is already working without PTI MNAs,” he tweeted.

He said Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assemblies could be dissolved but only if their chief ministers don’t face no-trust vote. “A reasonable face saving strategy though it is,” he said.

Babar said Project Taliban and Project Imran Khan may not have yet been totally dismantled but have been thoroughly exposed. “It’s no small achievement…nation has paid a huge price for exposing it but the price paid is worth the gains made. Despite disappointments, there’s much to celebrate,” he said.

He said that although in Punjab and KP, the dissolution of the assemblies can be avoided by bringing no-confidence motions against the chief ministers, but let Khan dissolve the assemblies, and let caretaker governments be established under the Constitution, and elections be held in these two provinces.

The PPP leader said that if chief ministers wanted, they could dissolve the assemblies as soon as Imran announced it. “But it didn’t happen,” he added.

He said Imran may ask his MPAs to resign but many may not. “Loss of his power base in two provinces will make him vulnerable. Let him dissolve the assemblies or ask his MPs to resign,” he said.

While in a Geo News show, Adviser to Prime Minister on Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit-Baltistan and PPP senior leader Qamar Zaman Kaira said that the sad situation was that Imran was still blaming the institutions and trying to put pressure.

He said the PTI chief along with his party was still saying that the army should intervene by supporting them.

He said that Imran will take a U-turn from this decision but we also have to make decisions because the PTI chief was out of the National Assembly.