Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairperson Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari on Sunday formally welcomed two key Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leaders and many others into the party fold.
Former PML-N leaders Nawab Sanaullah Zehri and Lt-Gen (retired) Abdul Qadir Baloch and many others joined the PPP on Sunday.
Speaking to a gathering in Quetta, Bilawal said the new additions would strengthen the PPP and help it win the next elections.
“The manner in which you have joined the party, we will give strength to each other and will work hard side-by-side and struggle,” he told the new entrants. “In the coming general elections, we will set up a PPP government in the entire country in general and Balochistan in particular. We will elect a jiyala chief minister and find solutions to Balochistan’s problems.”
He also mentioned names of other personalities who joined the PPP — former provincial minister Nawab Mohammad Khan Shahwani (National Party) and former minister Younis Changizi (PML-Q) — and thanked them for doing so, saying they would become “our power”.
Addressing the new members, Bilawal said the PPP wasn’t a mere political party but “a family, and we do politics for respect and will give respect to one another and the people of Balochistan. We will do politics together with each other in the coming days.”
Zehri and Baloch had quit the PML-N in November 2020 along with their supporters after they were not invited to attend a public meeting organised by the opposition alliance Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) on December 25.
They had also strongly reacted to PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif’s speech against the army chief and head of the Inter-Services Intelligence during a PDM rally in Gujranwala.
“We have consulted our people and like-minded political and tribal friends and with their consent decided to join the PPP on the invitation of the party leadership,” Baloch had said in a meeting held on June 15.
Zehri, speaking through video link, had said: “We do not take decisions in closed drawing rooms. We take decisions afte consulting our people and link-minded friends.”
Abdul Qadir Baloch, Sanaullah Zehri, others to join PPP
The PPP is set to make waves on the political horizon of Balochistan today (Sunday) by holding its power show in which over a dozen leaders of the PML-N and other parties would announce joining it.
