KARACHI – Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari announced on Tuesday he would take oath as a federal minister tomorrow (Wednesday) and was likely to be appointed the new foreign minister of the country.
He made the announcement at a press conference after a meeting of the PPP’s Central Executive Committee (CEC).
Adviser to Prime Minister on Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit-Baltistan Qamar Zaman Kaira had said last week that his party chairman would take oath as a federal minister within two days.
Bilawal was present at the ceremony where members of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s federal cabinet took oath last week, but he was not sworn in.
Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb had said the PPP chairman would take oath as a federal minister on his return to Pakistan from London.
In London, Bilawal held two meetings with PML-N patron Nawaz Sharif on the political matters of Pakistan.
Speaking at Tuesday’s press conference, Bilawal said former prime minister Imran Khan’s “foreign conspiracy” narrative hurt Pakistan’s image internationally.
Bilawal said the PTI chairman’s “conspiracies” would continue as he kept shifting his targets from the judiciary to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).
The PPP chairman said Khan violated the Constitution and considered it a “piece of paper”. Ex-deputy speaker Qasim Suri and President Arif Alvi were also involved in Khan’s “conspiracy”, he said.
“Imran Khan’s politics is based on lies and propaganda. He is running a campaign ‘why didn’t you save me’. He is targeting every institution that did not ‘save’ him,” the PPP chairman said.
Bilawal blamed Khan for making “all the institutions of Pakistan controversial” and called on the institutions to keep working within their constitutional parameters.
About his London meetings, Bilawal said Nawaz Sharif had invited him to iftar where they discussed the “Charter of Democracy (CoD) II” and not “the handing of portfolios”.
