KARACHI: Dr Zulfiqar Mirza, Sindh home minister and PPP provincial vice-president, said on Sunday that if the PPP was hit in Punjab, not even a single office of the PML-N would be allowed to exist in Sindh.
Addressing a rally in Lyari, he said the PPP was ready if PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif wanted an open confrontation. He said the episode of shoe-throwing at former Sindh chief minister Arbab Rahim could be repeated with somebody else. Mirza said he challenged the throne of Lahore with the power of the people of Lyari, adding the throne of Lahore should stop giving ultimatums.
“I am not a rogue, but I can become one for the sake of the country,” Mirza said at the ‘Solidarity Rally’ organised jointly by the People’s Aman Committee and the Katchi Rabita Committee.
“Nawaz Sharif should desist from adopting undemocratic tactics against the government,” he said, warning that the PPP could take any extreme action in the interest of the country and democracy.
Warning of ‘horrible consequences’ if undemocratic tactics were adopted against his party, the home minister said the PML-N wanted to dissociate the PPP from the coalition government in the Punjab. He said: “We will not leave the government easily and will complete our tenure”.
“We will fight from inside and outside the legislature, and even on the Motorway,” he said, adding the enemies of the PPP were the enemies of the country. He said he was declaring a war on the ‘negative mindsets’ of Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan. The PPP leader said the people of Lyari would foil Nawaz Sharif’s bid to destabilise the democratic process.
Meanwhile, Zulfiqar Mirza, swearing on his two sons, revealed that Benazir Bhutto once told him and his wife, Dr Fehmida Mirza, that she wanted to get rid of Naheed Khan and Dr Safdar Abbasi.
He said he wanted to ask Naheed Khan why she did not allow the Jiyalas from Lyari to accompany Benazir Bhutto to Liaquat Bagh in Pindi where she was assassinated. Mirza said if the Jiyalas of Lyari had been allowed to accompany Benazir Bhutto to Pindi, she would not have been assassinated.
Talking on the Lyari affairs, the PPP leader said the peaceful citizens of Lyari were being ‘misguided’. He said a committee had been formed to look into the problems of Lyari.
Mirza said President Asif Ali Zardari had directed him to visit Lyari frequently. He promised the people of Lyari that the PPP would nominate a Jiyala from Lyari to contest the next general elections.
Mirza urged the party leaders and workers to start preparing for the next general elections. In an apparent reference to a statement by MQM leader Dr Farooq Sattar, that they would transform 18 towns of Karachi into Paris, Mirza said: “They would not make Lyari Paris, but they we will make the town very neat and clean”.
Akhter Katchi of the Katchi Rabita Committee, People’s Aman Committee leader Sardar Uzair Khan, MNA Abdul Qadir Patel, provincial minister Rafiq Engineer, MPA Saleem Hingoro, Najmi Alam and Qasim Baloch also spoke on the occasion.
They demanded of the government to provide jobs to the people of Lyari, a nursing school at the Lyari General Hospital, MBBS admissions to Benazir Bhutto Medical College and a housing scheme.
