ISLAMABAD              -          Pakistan People’s Party Chief Bilawal Bhutto Zardari yesterday said his mother Benazir Bhutto - a two-time Prime Minister - was an extraordinary leader.

In a tweet on Benazir Bhutto’s birthday, he said: “My mother would have been 67 today. No words can do justice to her memory nor to our emotions. She was, is and forever will be ‘Benazir’. One without equal.

Separately, he said that all the political parties had unanimously rejected the federal fiscal budget.

He vowed that the PPP will not allow “our hospitals and healthcare facilities to be snatched at the hands of the federal government.”

Bilawal said that the federal government did not provide any assistance to the provincial governments on coronavirus and the federal budget was presented as if the coronavirus was not a problem and a thing of past.

“People had a thought that the federal government’s budget would be in line with aims and plans to amicably deal with all the emerging challenges but it disappointed and since the outbreak of the Coronavirus, the federal government is creating controversies and confusions,” he added.

PPP Vice President Senator Sherry Rehman said the federal government was trying to divide the nation.

She said the country was going through a crisis, a national emergency. “We need a leader like Benazir Bhutto,” she said.

The lawmaker said the numbers of COVID-19 cases were spiraling up, yet no lesson learnt had been reflected in the budget.

“Instead of worrying that the pandemic has exposed chronic weaknesses of our healthcare system, we are told now that look at India, they have more deaths than Pakistan! Like most information the government shared, this data is also misleading. India has 7 deaths per million and Pakistan has climbed up to 7 per. million,” she added.