HYDERABAD: PPP Chairperson Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari said on Sunday his party would not run away from elections like some of its allies, as this would create a vacuum in politics which would be filled by ‘someone else’.

Speaking to workers after the inauguration of a water filtration plant in Hyderabad, the PPP leader said “some allies are running from elections…if they are fleeing then let them flee, but people know when someone avoids elections then the space so created is filled by someone else”.

“Competition is necessary in politics, but when you have fear, you die. PPP workers never got scared despite murders of their party leaders and workers,” he said, declaring that PPP would not run away from polls.

Speaking about local government elections in Sindh, the PPP chairperson said MQM got ‘scared and backed out’ instead of contesting elections and ceded ground to the ‘anti-Pakistan’ PTI. “Today, the MQM doesn’t even have two towns’ chairmanship; what to talk of the mayor’s office.”

“I am telling [former political] allies that whosoever gets scared always dies. Political allies are scared,” he said and added they ran away from LG polls.

“Now they want to run away from general elections, but PPP is not trained to flee from polls,” he asserted. He said it had been propagated that Sindh was an “unclean province” when compared with other provinces.

“As if the rest of Pakistan is a paradise and garbage remains unattended in Sindh alone,” he said, asking the workers to “fail this propaganda”.

Published in Dawn, September 11th, 2023