ISLAMABAD - Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Thursday said Prime Minister Imran Khan ‘only insults himself when he passes comments such as sahiba’, a private TV channel reported.
“Referring to a man as a woman does not harm the man, but what sort of message does this send to the women of Pakistan? That our prime minister is saying that being a woman is an insult?” Bilawal asked while speaking to media here outside the Parliament House.
“This is Pakistan and here women stand shoulder to shoulder with men. If there was no Fatima Jinnah, had Pakistan been formed? If there was no Fatima Jinnah, who would have opposed Ayub?” he asked.
“We were the first Muslim country to elect a woman as prime minister,” the PPP chairman continued. “We are proud of the women of this country. We think they should be given space in politics, economy and society,” he said. “If Khan Sahab thinks that by passing a comment like this he is insulting anyone, he is only insulting himself,” he asserted. “He is this country’s prime minister and he should hold his tongue,” he added.
Commenting on statements that the prime minister referring to him as ‘sahiba’ was a ‘slip of tongue’, Bilawal said, “The amount of slip of tongues by this prime minister is more than the speed of light. Slip of tongue should not happen because it insults the entire nation.
So many slips of tongue happen when we have a selected PM,” he said, and appealed to Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi to travel with the prime minister so that such slips of the tongue can be avoided.