Karachi: Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Karachi President Saeed Ghani has said that it is utterly wrong to assume that the bureaucracy in Sindh will support the PPP in the upcoming general elections given the massive administrative reshuffle recently carried out in the province as per the directives of the Election Commission of Pakistan.
Speaking at a press conference at the Bilawal House on Tuesday, the PPP leader said that other provinces, particularly Punjab, had not witnessed such large-scale bureaucratic reshuffle as carried out in Sindh prior to the polls.
He said the chief secretary, inspector-general of police, deputy commissioners, SSPs, SHOs and even patwaris and head muharrars posted in police stations had been transferred in the province.
He said the anti-PPP forces had unduly indulged in the propaganda that the bureaucracy in the province was pro-PPP. Ghani alleged that the same propaganda was being used by the anti-PPP political parties to pressurise the caretaker government to post their favourite officers on key positions.
He further alleged that official patronage was available to the anti-PPP political forces in the province to improve their chances of winning the polls in Sindh. He said the people in Karachi were being unduly motivated to vote in favour of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) in the upcoming elections.
He added that prior to every elections, the PPP was subjected to a false propaganda campaign that it was going to be finished in the polls and its leadership would end up in jail. The PPP leader said the caretaker federal government contained pro-Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz elements and no other political party had such a representation in the interim cabinet in the Centre. He alleged that the PML-N was similarly being facilitated in Punjab.
Ghani, who served as the labour minister in the last elected government of Sindh, demanded that a level playing field should be available to every contesting party, including the MQM and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), for fair elections in the country. He said the general elections would provide solutions to all prevailing national-level crises as baseless pretexts should not be used to unduly delay the polls.
Also speaking on the occasion, Sindh PPP General Secretary Senator Waqar Mehdi told media persons that a central public meeting would be held on Wednesday (today) outside the Bilawal House in Karachi to mark the 16th martyrdom anniversary of PPP workers who had been killed in the Karsaz bombing of October 18, 2007.
He said the public meeting in addition to remembering the martyred workers of the party would also express solidarity with the oppressed people in Palestine facing naked Israeli aggression. PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari would address the public meeting. Mehdi said the Karsaz tragedy of October 18 was remembered as the worst incident of terror unleashed upon peaceful political workers anywhere in the world.