Asks Party to challenge PHC verdict tin SC
Calls for setting up of Victims Support Fund
Islamabad March 15, 2016: Chairman PPP Bilawal Bhutto Zardari today called for reverting to the historic ideological moorings of the Pakistan Peoples Party in a “systematic, sustained and forceful” manner so as to regain the Party’s pristine ideological position that makes it distinct from orthodox, conservative and regressive parties.
He said this while talking to a 5-member delegation of PPP senators hailing from KPK who called on him in Zardari House Islamabad on his visit to the federal capital.
Those who called on him included Senators Khanzada Khan president PPP KPK, Saifullah Bangash, Ahmad Hassan, Ms. Rubina Khalid and Farhatullah Babar. Former Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf, former Chairman Senate Syed Nayyer Hussain Bokhari, Information Secretary Qamar Kaira, vice President Sherry Rehman, political secretary Jamil Soomro and others were also present on the occasion.
Spokesperson senator Farhatullah Babar said that the PPP Chairman said that the people of KPK had suffered most grievously as a result of war on terror that left tens of thousands martyred and wounded and called upon the federal government to immediately set up a “Victims Support Fund” to support the victims of militancy and their families throughout the country and particularly in the KPK.
The Fund is also needed to relate the victims and their families to the ongoing war against militancy and lend greater force and ownership to the existential fight that Pakistan is waging, he said..
Bilawal asked the KPK senators to raise the issues of concerns to the province including CPEC alignment and industrial zones, the net hydel profit issue and the Gas Infrastructure Development Cess (GIDC) inside as well as outside the parliament through seminars, public discussions and addresses to bars and press clubs.
Spokesperson said that Bilawal Bhutto also expressed concern that the KPK government was resorting to dilatory tactics on adoption of women protection legislation and asked the KPK chapter of the Party to work out a strategy to persuade the provincial government adopt the law aimed at protecting women without delay.
Recalling that the Sindh Assembly had recently passed the Child Marriage Act as well as Hindu Marriage Law Bilawal Bhutto called up the KPK chapter to agitate the issue of women protection in the province at all available forums.
Elaborating on the ideological mooring he said that women empowerment, integration of the non Muslim brethren in the mainstream, politics of anti-status quo and empowering the common people and elected institutions as against the unelected elements are the key features of the Party’s ideology that must be pursued vigorously through public discourse as well as positive political action.
Bilawal Bhutto also sought briefing on the verdict of the Peshawar High court the other day overturning the judgment of Election Commission in women vote denial case in Lower Dir.
Farhatullah Babar quoted Bilawal Bhutto as saying that the PHC verdict setting aside the judgment of Election Commission to cancel the bye election in Lower Dir Provincial Assembly due to disenfranchisement of women voters was a setback to the struggle for women empowerment.
Bilawal asked the party to file an appeal against the verdict in the Supreme Court. The Party must utilize all legal and constitutional means to restore the space that the women of Dir seemed to have lost as a result of the verdict, he said.
