KARACHI    -    Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has said the country is facing the worst type of intolerance in modern times.

In his message on International Day for Tolerance, which was observed on Saturday (November 16), Bilawal said that extremism in national politics was damaging the society beyond repair. He said that democracy was being weakened and the election process was being replaced with the selection process to make people of Pakistan irrelevant in governance and decision making.

Bilawal said the PPP leadership had always promoted tolerance to create an egalitarian society based on justice, equality and peace.

“However, our founder prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was judicially murdered and then the first elected woman prime minister of the Muslim world Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. Still PPP Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari raised the “Long Live Pakistan” slogan. “Zardari suffered for 12 years in jail without any conviction and now again he has been incarcerated for more than 150 days without any FIR or reference, on the basis of mere allegations,” he said.

The PPP chairman said the man who was the tallest symbol of tolerance in Pakistan had been denied medical treatment and access to his personal doctors in jail despite the fact that his health was worsening day by day. He said the PPP was promoting tolerance in Pakistan because it belonged to those segments of the society that wanted their future generations to flourish in Pakistan instead of those spreading intolerance in Pakistan and raising their future generations abroad.