Bilawal
visits Tharparker but where is PPP’s top leader and former President
Asif Ali Zardari when dozens of innocent children have died because of
lack of food and medical care caused by the callous indifference of his
party’s government in the province?
Apparently the
former president has vanished during these testing times for the people
of Thar as not even a single statement has been issued by Asif Ali
Zardari, who is said to be in Dubai which is just over an hour long
flight from Karachi.
Silence on part of the PPP’s topmost
leader on this crisis situation of national importance and global
embarrassment is badly felt by all and sundry when already Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif has toured the affected areas and the Supreme
Court had taken suo moto notice of the situation.
Neither
the PPP media cell nor Zardari spokesperson of any of his partymen has
even bothered to issue a statement on his behalf. Such press statements
on different issues on Asif Ali Zardari’s behalf has been issued even in
the recent past but on Thar’s killing of dozens of children not a word
of sympathy or condemnation has been issued by the former president.
The
last press statement of Zardari was dated March 8. Issued on the eve of
international women’s day, former President Zardari had called upon the
government to remove the impediments in the way of smooth functioning
of the National Commission on the Status of Women to enable it function
freely and effectively for the purposes for which it was set up to
protect the social, economic, political and legal rights of women.
On
March 5 the former president paid rich tributes to young lawyer Fizza
Malik who was martyred by the terrorists in an attack in Islamabad
court.On these dates March 5 and March 8 the issue of Thar had already
come into focus of the media but still it did not catch the eyes of
Zardari, who has been often using Sindh card during his party’s rule at
the centre.
The reported death of over hundred children in
Thar because of non-provision of food by the PPP government in Sindh,
has jolted the whole of Pakistan. As soon the media focused on this
crisis, which speaks volumes of the incompetence and apathy of the
provincial government, the prime minister, the chief justice of
Pakistan, the chief justice of Sindh High Court and others immediately
took serious notice of this act of human catastrophe.
The
media pressure made the otherwise “inactive” and “sleeping” Chief
Minister Sindh Qaim Ali Shah to visit the area. Even Bilawal Zardari
Bhutto reached Thar on Monday when the prime minister was to tour the
area. However, still Asif Ali Zardari remains off the scene. Probably Mr
Zardari has adopted the strategy to make his son active.
Although
apparently Syed Qaim Ali Shah rules the province, it is generally
believed and said that the actual ruler of the province is Asif Ali
Zardari.Zardari’s choice men are occupying all the key positions in the
province whether those occupied by the politicians or by the serving or
retried bureaucrats.
