ISLAMABAD: Liaquat Bagh in Rawalpindi saw another Bhutto, the young charismatic leader of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, on Friday addressing hundreds and thousands of people at the place where his mother and Pakistan’s former prime minister Benazir Bhutto had laid down her life on December 27 twelve years ago.
Defying cautions by the government and security agencies, Bilawal had chosen the same venue to relive his mother’s memory and share with the people his party’s future strategy.
While announcing to reclaim Punjab, once a fortress of the PPP, Bilawal said he would continue his struggle against the fascist government of Imran Khan with the help of the people as did his mother Benazir and maternal grandfather Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
Party flags were put up at the venue of the public gathering as well as along roads in the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi.
Huge portraits, banners and billboards with pictures of the Bhutto family were displayed. They were inscribed with the party slogans.
Benazir was assassinated in Liaqaut Bagh in a gun-and-bomb attack while she was leaving the venue after a public address.
Since then, this is the first public meeting at the venue and independent analysts have termed it of great symbolic importance.
PPP workers and supporters from all over Pakistan had arrived in Rawalpindi for the event.
Participants from Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Balochistan, Punjab, Gilgit-Baltistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir had arrived in their hundreds. The party has made arrangements for their stay in local hotels.
In a statement earlier in the day, Bilawal paid tributes to his mother. “Benazir was the strongest chain of the federation of Pakistan, and those who assassinated her had planned to break that chain,” he said.
He said Pakistanis will never forget their “brave leader, who sacrificed everything for the country and for the rights of its downtrodden and barefoot masses”.
According to party leaders of Rawalpindi, more than 50,000 chairs were arranged at Liaquat Bagh.
A day earlier, on Thursday, while hearing a plea of the PPP leaders against refusal of the district administration to hold a public gathering at the Liaquat Bagh, the Rawalpindi bench of the Lahore High Court had not only allowed the PPP to hold rally but also directed the district administration to provide all facilities and security for the event.
The court had also directed the district administration and police to provide Bilawal with adequate security in the city.
