By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party, has issued his most pointed threat yet against the government of which his own party is a member, telling the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz that its “countdown has begun” and that the PPP’s campaign for public rights will now be carried “across the entire” country.
The warning, delivered in a trio of video messages posted to X on Monday, marks a sharp escalation in a dispute that has been simmering for more than a week between the two main partners in Pakistan’s coalition government, ostensibly over the conduct of ongoing elections to the Azad Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly.
“This movement will not remain restricted to the mountains of Kashmir or Gilgit-Baltistan,” Bhutto-Zardari said in one of the clips. “God-willing, I will run this movement across the entire Pakistan.” He went on to address the PML-N leadership directly: “My message for the friends in PML-N is just this: you can hear that voice, listen carefully — tick tock, tick tock. Your countdown has begun.”
The remark echoes language he used last week when addressing a rally in Muzaffarabad, where he cautioned that a stolen mandate in Kashmir would trigger “political consequences for the federal government” — a warning that has now hardened into open confrontation.
The PPP and PML-N, allies at the centre of a coalition government that has held power since the 2024 general election, have been trading increasingly bitter accusations since polling began in AJK on 27 July. The PML-N took the lead in the first phase in Mirpur, winning nine of 13 seats to the PPP’s four, and went on to claim the majority of seats contested in a second phase held on Sunday, according to unofficial results, taking 14 of the 19 seats up for grabs. Prime Minister’s Adviser on Political Affairs Rana Sanaullah said on Monday that the PML-N had now secured a simple majority overall, with 23 of the assembly’s 45 seats, clearing the way for it to form the government in Azad Kashmir.
The PPP has rejected the results at every stage, alleging that the polls have been marked by ballot-stuffing, intimidation and violence. Bhutto-Zardari repeated those claims in stark terms on Monday, describing the elections as “rigging elections, bullet elections, murderous elections and bloody elections”. He offered no new evidence for the characterisation beyond allegations his party has aired previously.
Despite the disputed outcome, the PPP chairman struck a note of defiance towards his own supporters, thanking them for delivering nine seats to the party “despite all this” and vowing to contest the result further. “The Pakistan Peoples Party does not lose courage, we do not retreat, and we do not leave the field,” he said. “God-willing, I will get you back the seats stolen from you in Mirpur and Muzaffarabad.”
A coalition partner turned critic
The friction is notable chiefly because of who is involved. The PML-N leads the federal government in Islamabad, and the PPP is its principal coalition partner — an arrangement forged in the wake of the 2024 general election, an outcome that senior PPP figures have themselves begun to publicly question in recent days, with some alleging rigging in that vote as well as in the current Kashmir contest. The two parties have also clashed in recent weeks over broader questions of governance, political mandate and performance in the provinces each controls.
That backdrop lent particular weight to a remark last week from Punjab’s governor, Sardar Saleem Haider Khan, who suggested that “the powers that be” were unhappy with the PML-N-led government — a comment widely read in Islamabad as a signal of behind-the-scenes strain within the ruling alliance.
The response from the PML-N camp on Monday was notably dismissive. Punjab’s information minister, Azma Bokhari, reacted to Bhutto-Zardari’s countdown remark with open sarcasm: “Oh no, we are scared. What will happen now?”
Violence and disputed casualties
Bhutto-Zardari used Monday’s videos to repeat claims that PPP supporters had borne the brunt of violence during the AJK campaign, saying a party worker had been killed, that a PPP member of the National Assembly had suffered a bullet wound, and that Chaudhry Latif Akbar, the party’s acting president in Azad Kashmir, had been “attacked” during polling in Muzaffarabad on Sunday.
The PML-N has disputed the account of the worker’s death, saying the man died of a heart attack and had no affiliation with the PPP — a rebuttal that has done little to defuse the row, with Mr Bhutto-Zardari continuing to cite the case as evidence of a campaign conducted, in his words, against “threats, rigging and bullets”.
“I salute the people of Kashmir,” he said, “for competing with the PML-N, its threats, rigging and bullets.”
Voting continues, rally planned for Bagh
The dispute unfolds against the backdrop of an election still under way. Voting in two Muzaffarabad constituencies, LA-27 (Kutla) and LA-28 (Lachhrat), was suspended amid bad weather and is scheduled to resume on Tuesday. Mr Bhutto-Zardari used his video messages to urge voters in both seats to back PPP candidates Bazil Naqvi and Javed Ayoub, framing the contest as a chance to thwart what he called a PML-N “conspiracy”.
He also confirmed that the PPP will hold a public rally in Bagh, in the Poonch division, ahead of the final phase of polling scheduled for 10 August across that division — part of what he cast as a wider party effort to contest results he regards as illegitimate. “The PPP does not lose courage, back down or leave the field,” he told supporters. “You should be ready.”
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