PPP fully prepared to thwart ‘PTIMF’ budget: Bilawal

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari announced Saturday that the PPP was fully determined to thwart ‘PTIMF’ budget in Parliament as the upcoming budget will be dictated by the IMF, and it would serve their interests, instead of those of the people of Pakistan.

“Passing the IMF’s proposed budget would be tantamount to undermining the freedom and integrity of the country and the PPP could not, in good conscience, allow the puppet PTI government to make Pakistan a vassal state,” he said in a statement on Saturday.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said, “The Prime Minister Imran Khan is always fond of proclaiming that Pakistan is on the verge of an economic miracle in the coming year, but the year comes and goes and we are left stuck further in the quagmire of inflation, debt, and economic decline.”

He questioned how an anti-people selected government could manage to bring about any positive change into the lives of the people, when they serve the interests of the IMF. “How shamelessly will the selected PM present his budget as a positive for Pakistan, when everyone living in Pakistan says otherwise,” he said.

He said levying heavy taxes on the already poverty stricken masses to fill the exchequer, would not lead to real economic growth. “And plunging Pakistan further into debt with no plan for true growth would never lift the economy from ruin,” he said.

Bilawal said that for all the tall claims of growth, the common man is still unable to buy food or medicine. He said that this talk of growth was tantamount to pouring salt on the wounds of the millions of Pakistanis whom this government has pushed below the poverty line.

He said the selected PTI-led federal government now has a history of extorting money from the masses while it allows its cronies in and out of government to plunder the state. “This selected federal government favours the elite with amnesty schemes while it deprives the people of their right to live with dignity,” he said, adding that every policy this PTI-led federal government has pushed serves the interests of their crony capitalist backers.

On the other hand, Bilawal said the PPP has always worked to protect the rights of the people, and it has always formulated policies it believed were in the best interest of the people. “The PPP will always fight for the rights of the people at every forum,” he said.