PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has blamed the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf for the political and constitutional crisis in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that led to the imposition of an emergency, telling the National Assembly on Wednesday that the measure was a last resort. Addressing the House during a debate on the emergency and Governor’s Rule, he said the federal government had made every possible effort to engage the opposition through dialogue before taking the step.
Bilawal said the Constitution empowered the president to proclaim an emergency under Article 232 in extraordinary circumstances, and that the government had held lengthy negotiations with the opposition before resorting to what he termed the “political atom bomb” of emergency rule. He accused the PTI’s provincial leadership of creating the conditions that made the emergency necessary, saying the party had carried out a “political suicide attack” on its own KP government and could not now shift the blame onto the federal government or the president.
He argued that the federal government had raised concerns that the KP administration was not extending adequate cooperation in the fight against terrorism, and that the province’s security situation was beyond what the provincial government could handle on its own. The emergency, he said, was imposed in response to internal disturbances and the provincial government’s lack of seriousness on counterterrorism.
Bilawal renewed his offer of political dialogue and said he was prepared to seek an end to the emergency through talks with the opposition. The remarks came hours after the National Assembly endorsed the emergency proclamation; opposition members including the PTI leadership have rejected the measure and challenged it in the Peshawar High Court. Separately, Senator Faisal Vawda claimed on Tuesday that the PTI had effectively collapsed and urged its leaders to join another platform or form a new party.
