Monday, December 4, 2017
Pakistan - #PPPGoldenJubilee - #PPP here to stay for another 50 years
12 years from now in 2029, PPP will mark the 50th anniversary of the hanging of its founding Chairman Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, and the grandson of the man himself will be at the peak of his political career. In 12 years, it is also likely that Gen. Zia’s spiritual son Nawaz Sharif will be nowhere on the political horizon of Pakistan and ‘THEIR’ blue-eyed boy Imran Khan might also be living a retired life in England.
On the 50th anniversary of Pakistan People’s Party, the reincarnation of Shaheed Bhutto & Shaheed BB will be with us in the form of Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. Unlike most of the political elite of Pakistan, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is likely to be the main player on the political landscape of Pakistan for several decades to come.
Today, majority of Pakistan’s population consists of youth. Seventy-five percent of Pakistan’s current population was not born yet during Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s time, when he recovered 90,000 Pakistani soldiers from Indian prisons, made Pakistan an atomic power, held a summit of the Islamic world, carried out land reforms, and much more for the people of this country. Now Bhutto’s grandson has the opportunity to interact with that 75 percent directly.
Nor does the majority of Pakistan’s youth know first-hand the account of Shaheed Benazir Bhutto’s struggle against Gen Zia. They are unaware of how she got missile technology for Pakistan, her empowerment of Pakistani women, the poor, and much more. Now her son is here to communicate with them in every town and every city.
Nawaz Sharif’s Panama mafia and Imran Khan’s property mafia have converted Pakistani politics into a billionaire’s club by spending billions during election campaigns and investing billions on the corporate media industry to influence public opinion. After putting President Asif Ali Zardari behind bars with false accusations, such mafias and their masters ran a vehement media trial against PPP and its leaders, but still could not undermine the achievements of President Asif Ali Zardari— his initiative for CPEC, devolution of power to provinces, shares for labour in factories, policies to support farmers and much more.
On the 50th anniversary of PPP , the forces who have always worked together in attempts to destroy PPP are up in arms against each other. They are being exposed at the hands of each other, and their ability to manoeuvre the opinion of the people by financing the media and through other state organs are getting weaker day by day. Artificial waves of popularity created by corporate media and their self-created billionaire’s club are dying down.
On the other hand, on the 50th anniversary of the PPP , the party is, under the leadership of Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, ready to reorganise and regroup labour, youth, students, peasants and commoners through PPP organisations to make it the most resilient party across Pakistan.
On its’ 50th anniversary, PPP will start its journey looking ahead to the next 50 years of Pakistani politics, whereas the leaders of the other two major political parties are counting on these being the last and final elections of their life.
From the death cell of SZAB in a Rawalpindi jail to the heat and dust of SMBB’s cell in Sukkhar Jail, from 11 years of jailed torture on President Asif Ali Zardari to the determination of Bakhtawar, Aseefa, and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari to continue their fight for poor, when all their collective struggles are understood, the dreams of Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto & Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto will be fulfilled. Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will materialise their dreams becoming the youngest prime minister of Pakistan after Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto.
#Pakistan - Comment Te Dire Adieu ( "It Hurts to Say Goodbye" ) - A leaf from history: The prime minister is hanged
By Shaikh Aziz
It was time. In the evening of April 3, a team of four officers entered Rawalpindi Jail to end a chapter in Pakistan’s history.
Jail Superintendent Yar Mohammad, Magistrate Bashir Ahmad Khan, jail doctor Sagheer Hussain Shah, and Security Battalion Commander and Security Officer Lieutenant-Colonel Rafiuddin had all arrived to carry out court orders.
As narrated by Col Rafiuddin in his book Bhutto Kay Aakhri 323 Din (The last 323 days of Bhutto), the jail superintendent visited Bhutto at 6.30pm in his cell, along with a witness. He found Bhutto lying on the floor. He first called Bhutto’s name to draw his attention, and then read out the execution order.
“According to the March 18, 1978 order of the Lahore High Court, you, Mr Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, are to be hanged for the murder of Nawab Mohammad Ahmad Khan,” read the order. “Your appeal in the Supreme Court was rejected on February 6, 1979 and the review petition was turned down on March 24, 1979. The president of Pakistan has decided not to interfere in this matter. So it has been decided to hang you.”
After months of litigation and appeals for clemency, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto is finally silenced
Col Rafiuddin was standing besides the jail superintendent.
“I did not see any sign of panic on Mr Bhutto’s face while the jail superintendent was reading out the order. Instead, I could see that he was quite calm, relaxed, and had a smile on his face,” observed the colonel.
After listening to the jail superintendent, Bhutto retorted that he should have been informed about the execution 24 hours before but that had not been done. On the contrary, he argued, when his daughter and wife met him at 11.30am, they were not sure about the day or time either. Bhutto was told that the required order for execution was with the jailer.
Without any hesitation, the jail superintendent then asked Bhutto whether he would like to write his will, since he was to be hanged in a few hours. Bhutto nodded and asked for some writing materials. He also asked the jailer to show him the black warrants, to which the jailer replied that as per the law, that could not be done.
At 8.00pm, Bhutto drank a cup of coffee. He also called for Abdur Rahman, his jail attendant, and asked Abdur Rahman to forgive him. Around 10.00pm, he asked Rahman to bring some warm water so that he could shave.
Bhutto then turned to Col Rafi.
“Rafi, what is this drama that is being staged?”
The question went unanswered.
Bhutto then brushed his teeth.
For some time, he sat on his bed and began writing something. He asked the warden about how much time was left till his execution. He was told the time. He then burned all pieces of papers he had tried to write on.
At 11.25pm, Bhutto told his attendant that he would try to sleep for a while because he had not been able to sleep properly last night, but asked to be woken up at midnight. But soon, the assistant jail superintendent and other staff arrived at his cell. They wanted to wake Bhutto up from the outside. When they did not get any response, they were told to enter the cell and try to wake him up. The officials complied, only to find that Bhutto had opened his eyes. Again, Bhutto did not respond to the doctor’s call. On the insistence of Col Rafiuddin, Bhutto was medically checked for a third time; the doctor said that he was fine.
Around 1.35am, the officials’ team entered the cell and saw Bhutto resting on a mattress. The magistrate, Bashir Ahmad Khan, asked him whether he had written a will. Bhutto replied in a low voice that he had tried, but his thoughts were so disturbed that he could not do it and instead he burnt the paper. He was then asked whether he wanted to walk to the gallows or whether he would prefer to be carried, to which Bhutto remained silent.
After a few seconds, the jail superintendent called his men, who lifted Bhutto by his limbs and put him on a stretcher. As Bhutto lay motionless on the stretcher, he was handcuffed.
Once they reached the scaffold, two wardens helped him to the hanging board. His handcuffs were then readjusted; once his hands were taken behind his back, Bhutto was placed in chains again.
All present there stood in silence.
Tara Masih, the executioner, was already there and ready to perform his task. He put a mask over Bhutto’s face.
When the clock struck four minutes past two in the morning, the executioner whispered something into Bhutto’s ear and pressed the lever. Bhutto’s body fell about five feet; it remained in that position for half an hour. A doctor then checked Bhutto and pronounced him dead.
Tara Masih then brought Bhutto’s corpse down, and began massaging his hands and legs. It was said that the executioner wanted to straighten his limbs, which might have twisted owing to the impact of the hanging.
Half an hour later, the doctor handed over the death certificate to the jail superintendent. His body was handed over to jail officials, who bathed his body. His body was placed in a coffin, and taken to Chaklala air base where a C-130 plane was ready to fly to Jacobabad. The plane took off, but after an hour’s flight, it returned since it had developed some fault. Another plane then took off with the body and the officials accompanying it.
At a distance, Benazir Bhutto spent the night in insufferable grief and distress, lonely and confined. As she sunk in grief, someone in the wilderness hummed a 1968 French song titled Comment Te Dire Adieu? (How to say goodbye to you?) — composed in the same year that Bhutto began his political struggle against Ayub Khan. But in the wee hours of April 4, 1979, it was time to bid farewell to the prime minister. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was no more.
Pakistan - The Bhuttos and me: a lifetime of politics and funerals
By Owais Tohid
I was buying paan leaves for my grandmother that morning in Larkana, when the shop owner Taufeeq bhai, turned up the volume of his radio.
The newscaster Khalid Hameed introduced the 11 o’clock bulletin, and announced that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had had his funeral performed and was already buried.
Everyone stilled. Within moments, life was leached out of the crowded Pakistan Chowk, as one by one, the mithai shop closed, the cycle wallah shut his garage, and Taufeeq bhai walked out of his shop in a stupor.
The villagers, who had brought butter and lotus roots to sell, squatted by the roadside with their heads in their hands.
For a few moments, Larkana, Bhutto’s hometown, was as silent as a graveyard.
Then, two military vehicles drove through the area. I am not sure who started it but the bazaar suddenly reverberated with ‘Bhutto zindabaad.’
My friends and I decided to cycle to the graveyard, Garhi Khuda Bakhsh. Armoured vehicles and soldiers blocked the entrance.
Groups of people had started gathering outside and soldiers pointed their guns straight at them and threatened to shoot whoever came forward.
The crowd didn’t require investigative reports. It broke into hysterical shouts of ‘Qaatil, qaatil, Zia qaatil.’
By the time of the soyem two days later, Mumtaz Bhutto and Khar were greeted with the slogans, ‘Ghaddar, ghaddar.’
Later, we found out that hundreds were picked up from Larkana and its surroundings.
Much of my childhood memories are wound up with the persona of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
Being chosen to present flowers to Shah of Iran and Queen Farah Diba at the Mohenjodaro airport, stepping onto the wrong side and Bhutto carrying me to the correct spot.
In the 1977 elections, him visiting my home with his comrade and my mother's closest friend, Dr Ashraf Abbasi.
Him telling me to help canvass votes for him and laughing when I said ‘it is better to work for a revolution,’ parroting what veteran communist, comrade Sobho Gyanchandani had told us.
Him telling off my brother for reading Jasarat, because the newspaper was what he called a ‘right-wing propaganda machine.’
I remember going to his open kucheri. I wrote an application requesting a scholarship and handed it to him. He asked me to give it to the education minister Waheed Buksh Bughio, who was sitting in the same enclosure.
I told him that the minister, who was also my neighbour, could barely read English and could not write it at all. He enjoyed that, and it was only much later that I realised that it was part of his strategy – to keep the feudal lords in his political ranks but also belittle them in front of peasants and commoners.
I was almost 20 when I went on my first road trip to Punjab. My friends and I pooled our savings and rented a small car to drive to Lahore.
It was 1986 and we were heading to the Lahore airport because Benazir Bhutto was coming back. It was a joyride like no other. A festival of the wretched:
Tens of thousands poured out on the streets, among them those who had been in prisons, who had been tortured, who had been underground, the warriors of the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy, their embattled, fatigued families, the desolate peasants who were remembering how to dance again.
The crowds were suffocating, all desperate for a glimpse of BB, all gasping for a breath of democracy. It reflected in the historic 1988 election where every major feudal lord and tribal chief lost to the political unknowns fielded by the Pakistan Peoples Party.
I met and interviewed Benazir on numerous occasions while working for the Agence France Presse, and saw her aggression before elections, the adrenaline at escaping the crackdowns, teargas and barricades, and the bitterness at Farooq Leghari’s betrayal.
“I considered him a brother and he stabbed me in the back. He didn’t even wait for Murtaza’s chehlum,” she said, convinced that it was a conspiracy against the Bhuttos, to kill one and through that, delegitimise and finish the other.
Murtaza Bhutto had come back a staunch critic of his sister’s government, and a passionate, romantic revolutionary who wanted to change the fundamentals of the country’s power structures in one go.
We spent hours with him talking about his days of exile in Afghanistan and Syria, his meetings with world leaders like Arafat, Najib, Assad, and Gaddafi.
I told him that I thought he was too idealistic for Pakistan’s politics. He said without ideals, nothing remains except compromises and selling out.
I met him for the last time on a Friday evening for a press conference at 70 Clifton, where he invited me, Javed Soomro, and Mazhar Abbas, to go to an upcoming public meeting with him. We declined because of our story deadlines.
A few hours after leaving the press conference, I received the message ‘firing at 70 Clifton’ on my DC Pager. The roads were blocked. I ran from what was then Schon Circle to what was then Mideast Hospital.
I saw injured men being carried in. Nasir Hussain was slamming his head against a wall. Murtaza was gone.
I saw Benazir run inside the hospital in her bare feet, hitting her chest, screaming, ‘my brother, my brother.’ Ghinwa Bhutto, grief-stricken, held her daughter Fatima Bhutto, and turned away.
Once again the Garhi Khuda Bakhsh graveyard was filled with anguished and angry people, and once more the streets vibrated with emotionally-charged energies.
The image I carry over from that day is of Begum Nusrat Bhutto, the most tragic figure imaginable. She lost her husband, her youngest son Shahnawaz Bhutto, and now Murtaza whom she sided with in the political feud.
I met Fatima, then a very young girl, but composed and articulate in an interview, narrating her unforgettable memories of her father.
At that time I thought she might take up the mantle of Bhutto forward, but she turned out to become a world-renowned writer, and is now a good friend.
In 2007, General Musharraf imposed a state of emergency and closed down news channels. When journalists resisted, they were thrashed and beaten by the police.
In protest, I, along with a few other senior journalists, courted arrest. I received a solidarity call from Benazir when we were detained in the police station.
She visited Geo to express support, where Imran Aslam, Mir Ibrahim and myself had a long discussion with her.
She had just survived the Karsaz suicide attack. “You’re a ticking time bomb,” I told her. “You have to be careful.”
“Yes but I cannot hide inside when there is an ocean of people who have come out on the roads to greet me, who believe I can bring some change to their lives,” she responded.
Only a few weeks later, she was assassinated, and I was back at Garhi Khuda Bakhsh. Sindh was in flames. The hostility was at a pitch the graveyard had never experienced before.
The slightest antagonism could have spiraled things into uncontrollable conflict, but the party leadership reined it back.
I could see Bilawal Bhutto and his sisters offering fateha. I hoped I never have to visit this graveyard for burials again.
So many of my memories are tied to this party, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the terrible. I have turned 50 years old, and the party is also 50.
In the past year, I have fought and survived cancer. The party has its own cancers to fight.
From what I have learned about the disease, it does not have external triggers or causes.
It starts as an internal mutation. It is this that the PPP must fight against, and half of the fight is a matter of will.
CM Sindh to present PPP's case in Supreme Court: Bilawal
Pakistan Peoples Party Chairperson Bilawal Bhutto Zardari shared on social media that he is glad that Sindh chief minister will get an opportunity to present the case of PPP government in Supreme Court.
Earlier in the day, SC’s Karachi Registry had summoned CM Murad Ali Shah in a water pollution case.
Over the matter, Bilawal tweeted: “1 of biggest crisis affecting all of Pakistan is water. The Sindh Govt has taken practical steps to address this from investing in the most RO plants across the province, linging of our canals and construction of damns. I’m glad CM will get a chance to present our case in SC.”
PPP chair also claimed that the issue is not Sindh-specific, adding that the province is always “singled-out”.
Bilawal wrote: “Water is not just a Sindh issue. While we beat the drum of CPEC in Balochistan many areas have no access to water. South Punjab has its own water issues as does southern KPK. Islamabad even has water access problems.What have other provinces done? Why is Sindh always singled out?”
SC hears water contamination case
The Supreme Court summoned on Monday Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah on December 6 while hearing the air and water pollution case at the Karachi Registry on Monday.
The three-member bench, which was hearing a case on the provision of clean drinking water for people of Sindh at Supreme Court’s Karachi Registry, also summoned former city mayor Mustafa Kamal on December 6.
During the court proceedings, Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Mian Saqib Nasir observed: “This is a matter of people’s lives, it cannot be ignored. The chief minister will be asked about all the steps he has taken in this regard.”
The chief justice also remarked that the judiciary must intervene when the government fails to fulfill its responsibilities.
“There will be no compromise on air and water pollution,” he remarked, adding “the high officials will also be summoned in the case if necessary.”
#50YearsofPPP - Bilawal advises Nawaz Sharif to retire from politics
Pakistan Peoples Party Chairperson Bilawal Bhutto Zardari advised political opponent and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif to take retirement from politics.
While speaking to media in Islamabad on Monday, the PPP chief remarked: “What more does Nawaz want from politics?”
Nawaz should take a retirement for the betterment of democracy and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, said Bilawal.
On PPP’s future plans, Bilawal shared that he will share the party’s plan of action during the PPP rally in Islamabad.
The PPP leader said that Nawaz-government has not remain serious in governance from last four years. He said that from last four years the country did not have any foreign minister.
On November 30, Pakistan Peoples Party Chairperson Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Thursday said it was demoralising to see the writ of state erode.
The PPP chairperson was addressing a press conference on the occasion of PPP's golden jubilee celebrations.
“It was demoralising for my entire generation to see writ of the state erode, to see the abject surrender of the state, to see the rule of law made a mockery of, to see the freedom of press strangled," said the PPP chairperson in regards to the Faizabad sit-in and the subsequent agreement reached to end the protest.
Commenting on the country’s political situation, he further said that the conditions had deteriorated in recent times.
Bilawal had also announced that PPP will hold a rally at Islamabad's Parade Ground on December 5, in honour of party's golden jubilee.