Bilawal says needs only one term to turn around Pakistan

SAHIWAL: With the election fever reaching its zenith, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari said on Monday he did not need four but only one term as the prime minister to change the fate of the crisis-hit Pakistan.

An aspirant for the prime minister’s slot, he took the veiled dig at Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PMLN) supremo Nawaz Sharif, who is taking a fourth shot at power after being granted relief from the judiciary, during a power show in Sahiwal.

Addressing the public meeting, Bilawal said: “I do not want four, but one chance. If you give me a chance, I will change the fate of the country and solve all problems [being faced by the country].”

Referring to the skyrocketing inflation, unemployment, and poverty, the PPP leader claimed that his party was the sole solution to these problems. “Pakistan is going through a default time,” Bilawal said, adding that there was a “division” in society.

The former foreign minister warned that hostile forces could use the “division” to fulfil their nefarious designs. “I am contesting election to bury the politics of hatred and division.”

Recalling his mother and Pakistan’s first female elected prime minister Benazir Bhutto — who was assassinated in a suicide bomb blast-cum-gun attack in Rawalpindi on Dec 27, 2007, Bilawal said: “Today, Bibi Shaheed’s philosophy is needed more than it has ever been in the past.”

Highlighting the services of former prime minister and president Zulfikar Ali Bhutto — who was hanged to death on April 4, 1979, in a murder case — Bilawal said he had decided that they would have to do what “Quaid-e-Awam” did.

If his party was given another chance to govern the country, the PPP stalwart vowed that they would give interest-free loans to women, introduce the Benazir Kissan Card, subsidy to formers, the Youth Card, and free healthcare facilities for the masses.