LAHORE - Former finance minister of Punjab and Secretary General Punjab People’s Party has called upon the government to allocate funds in the forthcoming budget for conducting census in the country this year which is also a constitutional requirement.
He said this in a statement issued on Sunday.
Underscoring the importance of census, he maintained that it was an established practice the world over to formulate planning and development strategy reflective of the right priorities to be undertaken for a certain period of time.
He added that without credible census it was not possible to prioritise the budget allocation for development programmes based on the needs of the local population.
“Development for development’s sake cannot be justified in the contemporary times due to the imperatives of social justice,” he remarked. .
Kaira also referred to the necessity of undertaking census because it would also help in the compilation of authentic voter lists for holding elections in the country either at local, provincial or national levels.
Elections held after the census will measure up the representative character of the elected institutions and the governments in the true sense, he concluded.
CASES AGAINST GILANI, PERVAIZ POLITICAL VICTIMISATION:
WATTOO
The PPP’s central Punjab President Mian Manzoor Ahmed Wattoo has criticised the present government for perpetrating political victimisation of the PPP party leaders.
“The PPP’s support for democracy should not be treated as the weakness of the party”, he said in a statement.
Wattoo said that the politically motivated cases against former Prime Ministers and former Federal Minister for Commerce and Trade should be dropped because politics of victimisation was counter-productive and self-defeating.
He said that the politics of vendetta was a flagrant violation of the democratic practices and, therefore, should be abandoned for all times to come.
He urged upon the government to desist from repeating the history which was the stated commitment of the two parties contained in the Charter of Democracy signed on May 14, 2006, in London.
He pointed out that during the previous PPP government’s five years tenure there had not been a single political prisoner in the country, adding the party completed the tenure while practicing the policy of reconciliation in letter and spirit.
Their whole focus should be building bridges among themselves in order to enable the country to confront the challenges of extremism and terrorism, he added.