LAHORE - PPP (Shamed Bhutto Group) Chairperson Ghinwa Bhutto on Wednesday said she did not believe in the present corrupt and inefficient system. It must be changed to empower the people she added.
“The present system does not empower the people to resolve their problems. It, rather, empowers the ruling elite who doesn’t have any regard for common man’s miseries,” she observed while addressing a news conference at Dr Morayshire Hessian’s Lahore residence here, the place where PPP was founded 45 years ago.
She was of the view that people need to be empowered by devolution of power at the local level and by placing the civil bureaucracy under the supervision of the public representatives.
Ghinwa did not see any real devolution of power taking place as a result of the 20th amendment in the constitution. “It only took away certain powers from bureaucrats in Islamabad and handed them over to those sitting in the provinces,” she maintained. Pleading for decentralisation of power, she said the federal government should be dealing only with the subjects of defence, foreign affairs, currency and the Supreme Court. The rest should be devolved to the provinces and then to the local governments, she said, adding the collection of taxes should be the responsibility of the provincial and district governments. “There should be a limit to keep wealth and the rich should be made to pay taxes,” she asserted.
Ghinwa, the widow of Mir Mustafa Bhutto, was asked who would change the inefficient system in a situation where almost all political parties believed in it, and, if she saw any role for her to make the things happen for a change. 
“You, the media, all of us, have to play our respective role,” she told the questioner. Asked that media was already doing its part of the duty, she insisted it was not doing it ‘fully’.
On Syrian crisis, she said Pakistan should refrain from interfering in other countries’ affairs as such a decision would endanger country’s security. “The youth we are planning to send to that country to fight against Basher’s regime, would come back later on and become a headache for us like the TTP”. She wondered while the government had opted for the option of negotiations with the TTP militants, it was sending its people to fight in Syria.
To a question, she said her children, Fatima and Zulfikar Junior would stay away from parliamentary politics. “Fatima is already serving the people of Pakistan through her writings. Recently, she wrote a novel on Pakistan’s problems which is likely to be nominated for some international award,” she replied when pressed to give the reasons for her children’s disinterest in politics.