Bilawal Bhutto urges lawyers to support movement for rule of law, supremacy of the Constitution

Karachi: Chairman Pakistan People’s (PPP) Party Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has said that the Parliament shall continue to remain an ineffective forum and the freedom of media in true sense would also remain a dream until full respect and implementation of the constitutional rights is ensured.

Addressing at the Karachi Bar Associations, the PPP Chairman said that the lawyers’ movement which was commenced here by KBA lawyers did not mean to be a movement for the Judges or Supreme Court’s Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry but that lawyers’ movement was for the “Rule of Law’.

“It is imperative for the lawyers’ fraternity that they should continue to support the democratic forces in their struggle so as to ensure the ‘Rule of law’ in letter and spirit, and for the respect and implementation of the Constitution in Pakistan,” he stated asking the lawyers to convey a message to all that an independent judiciary that would protect the human rights and democracy and defy the detention or imprisonment of the political workers and their leadership is need of the hour.

“I want to solve the problems of the legal community, but the legal fraternity also has to support our struggle for the rights of the people. Lawyers have to support us in the struggle for the refund of the funds to the province by the Federal government and the money of Malir being retained in the court,” he stated.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari stated that people’s money has to be handed back to the Sindh government so that the same should be spent on welfare and progress of the people of the province. “PPP has joined hands with lawyers for the supremacy of the Constitution, democracy and human rights and hence they should also support the democratic forces against this non-democratic and selected government and its facilitators.

PPP Chairman said that he could not count numbers of the false cases against Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto and former President Asif Ali Zardari, but the promising fact was that the lawyers always stood by the PPP at every hearing. Today when the PPP is in action for the people’s rights, the role of the lawyers’ fraternity is inevitable. I am sure as long as the legal community stands by us, they will not let my workers get down.” He asked the lawyers to participate in PDM public meetings in large numbers to prove that country’s legal fraternity stands with the democracy and masses in every condition.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said that we have been forced to raise the issues of the people on streets because these issues are not allowed to be discussed in Parliament. Opposition leaders are not allowed to speak. Shahbaz Sharif has been sent to jail, while Khursheed Shah is still in jail and one of PSF activist, Mumtaz Ali Khan, from Gilgit-Baltistan, was arrested in 2005 and convicted in 2014 by military courts.

He warned that if the future of genuine political activists is destroyed then it would result in replacement of them by non-democratic and non-political people adding that when we tell the sitting Prime Minister that you are selected, this system is hybrid, and you are robbing our democracy and human rights, so in response the selected PM says that he is ‘democracy’.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said that only because of the most incompetent PM ever in the history the masses are suffering and have become the victims of his arrogance, ineligibility, ruthless economic disorders and mega corruption scams.