Youth ready to confront the selected: Bilawal

KARACHI: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said that new generation was ready to confront the selected.

Addressing the convention organised by the People’s Students’ Federation (PSF) here at the Arts Council on Wednesday, the PPP chairman said that it was high time that youth should assume the leadership role in the country.

Bilawal said that it was the prime time for the young people to lead the country from the front against the decayed and frustrated elements having no sanity and sense of responsibility.

He said the PSF office-bearers and workers had, through years of unshaken and nerve-writhing struggle, had secured the right to form the student union that had been snatched in the past by dictator Ziaul Haq.

He said that late Benazir Bhutto in her first term had restored the student unions along with the labour unions, but under a conspiracy the government of Bhutto was toppled and the government that followed again imposed ban on student unions. He said that PPP was not the party of landlords and ‘peers.’

He said that Pakistanis got this country not as a result of any war or violence but as a result of a peaceful democratic struggle under the leadership of Quaid-i Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Quaid-e-Awam Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto gave the precious gift to the nation in form of democracy.

The PPP chairman was of the view that the biggest atrocity against the youth of this country was that an attempt was made to suppress their voice. He lamented that the young people were not allowed to talk about their own problems. “Some frustrated elements are predominantly obsessed with a negative idea that country's youth should not be involved in mainstream politics.

“We wonder why there is so much violence and barbarism in our society. The politics of religion and ethnicity get space because student unions were banned,” he said.

By banning student politics for their own benefit, some elements not only harmed the youth of country's academic institutions such as colleges and universities but also inflicted irreparable loss to the society, he commented.

He said that the ever-escalating fee graph of educational institutions was visible to everyone. The way the state was being run, and graduates were being deprived of job opportunities, the students would now speak and draw attention to such issues.

The PPP chairman said that cases of harassment were being reported from educational institutions, but it was a great injustice that those cases would be investigated by those who belonged to the same institution as they won't do justice at all.

"Student unions are our first step, and when the students are organised, they will fight for the solution of their problems, but if there is a PPP government, you will run the government yourself," he said.