Pakistan's Bilawal sets sight on 2018 general elections

Bilawal challenges political parties for next general elections in 2018. 

KARACHI - Bilawal Bhutto Zardari lashed out at the opponents of his Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP) on Friday and made clear his intensions of leading the party in the next general elections in 2018.

The PPP had lost in the last elections held in May this year and could only manage to hold on to its majority in its traditional stronghold in the southern Sindh province, and most observers blame the lackluster performance of the PPP’s government over the past five years for this loss.

But just a few months after the elections, the 25-year-old PPP chairman made an emotional speech to mark the sixth anniversary of the blast in Karachi’s Karsaz area, which coincided with the return of Bhutto to Pakistan and in which more than 175 people, who had gathered to welcome the former premier, were killed and hundreds other injured.

Bilawal, who has been launched into politics just recently, made clear that he was there to stay though he is yet to show the same charisma that her late mother, or grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the founder of the PPP, had.

Addressing party workers at an event to mark the sixth anniversary of the Karsaz incident, Bilawal sad that “Asif Zardari would be the bow and I would be the arrow for the PPP workers in the next elections”.

He added that the workers as well as the leaders of the PPP had sacrificed their lives for the restoration of democracy in the country.

“The PPP is not a political party but a passion,” he said at the ceremony which was also attended by Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah, and PPP leaders Raza Rabbani, Sherry Rehman and others.

Bilawal also claimed that though his party could not end terrorism from the country, but stood in front of them as a rock.

He also took a dig at his political opponents, and said that his party would get rid of the “lion of Punjab” as well as the “tsunami” in the Khyber Pakhtunkwa province, in clear references to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League and cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

He also targeted the Muttaheda Quami Movement (MQM) in his speech, and said that though Pakistan gained independence from the British in 1947, Karachi was still “a colony of London”, and added that his party will cut the kite being flown via telephone from London, apparently referring to MQM leader Altaf Hussain who is based in London.