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According to a BBC on Sunday, Bilawal while addressing a party convention in New York accused Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry of dealing the case of his son with a different method.
He warned that if judiciary will not reform itself then people of Pakistan will bring reforms in the judiciary. “We believe in free and independent judiciary,” he said. Talking about war against terrorism he said that government of Pakistan People’s Party was fighting this war own its terms. Commenting on Balochistan, Billawal said that situation is grim there as people are missing and mothers are receiving dead bodies of their sons. But he expressed the hope that this bloodshed will not last long.
Bilawal said that an army dictator is responsible for the insurgency in Balochistan and extradition of people during dictator’s regime was unlawful. “Pakistan People’s Party freed Pakistan from the unconstitutional acts of Musharraf regime and restored the constitution to its actual form of 1973,” he said. He said establishment of an independent Chief Election Commissioner was a great achievement of the PPP and their government has succeeded in establishing the democratic norms in a period of less than five years. He said the people of Pakistan have sacrificed for a shining democratic future, adding that legislation was in progress for the rights of minorities. The PPP chairman also talked about the welfare projects in the country including the Benazir Income Support Programme.
Our Special Correspondent from New York: Two groups of PPP activists fought bitterly and some were injured in the brawl as Bilawal, clad in traditional Pakistani dress – shalwar Kameez, was waiting in an adjoining room for the event to start. The young PPP chairman called in the heads of those groups who then helped in restoring order.
Accompanied by his sister Bakhtawar Bhutto Zardari, he spoke in English to the gathering of PPP supporters in the spacious hall of Soundview Broadcating, a modern Pakistani-owned facility for launching international ethnic television channels in US and Canada.
Bilawal said Pakistan has been transformed from a dictatorship into a democracy. Democracy in Pakistan is strong, growing, and laying the groundwork for a very different nation than the country has ever known, he added.
“We have restored the supremacy of parliament, stripped our constitution of the illegal powers usurped by military dictators and nourished a thriving civil society, (with) one of the freest presses in the world,” he told the International Convention of PPP, organised by PPP-USA in Queens, a borough of New York City.
Pledging to address the genuine grievances of smaller provinces, the PPP chairman said that the present government was doing its best to resolve the problems of Baloch people democratically “as we see them as an integral part of our state of Pakistan”.
“We have stopped living in denial, and we cannot let the province bleed the way it has and taken historic measures to address the underlying causes of the challenges in Balochistan... With every missing person and with every dead body, we realise, a Baloch family loses hope in Pakistan.”
He said, “Where (ex-president Pervez) Musharraf treated the people of Balochistan as enemies of the state, we see them as an integral part of our state of Pakistan.” The share of the Balochistan in the new NFC, he added, has been more than 95 billion rupees as opposed to less than 40 billion rupees before our government took power.
Bilawal said the PPP has always, and will always, stand by oversees Pakistanis and committed to insuring right to vote to them in elections. “We are committed to the idea that dual-nationals should be able to participate in all our country’s civic matters, and that includes the right to contest elections,” he told his party supporters.
In a thinly veiled reference to the Supreme Court judges, he said no unelected people have the right to question the loyalty of anyone elected by the people of Pakistan; therefore the expatriates should be given the right of vote and to contest the general elections.
Appreciating the contribution of the Pakistanis living abroad, he said, he knew their feelings as he had been forced to live in exile himself along with his mother Benazir Bhutto. Most Pakistanis, he said, were first forced into exile during country’s darkest dictatorship in the 1980s.
Under the PPP government, overseas remittances had increased from $6 billion, from when it replaced Musharraf’s dictatorship, to almost $13 billion under the democratic government. He said the PPP was transforming Pakistan and building its future.
President Azad Jammu and Kashmir Sardar Muhammad Yaqoob, President PPP USA Shafqat Tanveer and a PPP activist Sarwar Chaudhry were among those who spoke on the occasion. Bilawal was also given “Voice of Democracy” award by the PPP-USA for his efforts in promoting democracy.
Judiciary has a double standard, says Bilawal
