Bilawal visits Thar but where is Mr Asif Ali Zardari?

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.