MQM-P activists take to the streets as PPP sees conspiracy to cause bloodshed

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan and Sindh’s ruling Pakistan Peoples Party turned their guns at each other on Wednesday over the controversial new local government law, with both sides alleging attempts to achieve political gains.

A large number of women activists of the MQM-P attended a protest on Wednesday against the amendments to the local government law recently passed by Sindh Assembly and vowed to take the protest to every road and street in the province.

“For past two to three weeks, the MQM-P has been staging protests in various districts of Karachi against this black local government law and today our mothers and sisters have also gathered to challenge this black law made by the Sindh government that is aimed at rendering local government institutions powerless,” said senior leader Amir Khan while speaking to the participants of the rally.

“The spirit of women who organised the protest has encouraged every single person in the movement against the passage of the local government bill and has given them courage.” Khan regretted that the higher authorities and judiciary were not taking notice of the excesses being committed by the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party in the province.

He said the MQM-P was not alone which was against the bill. “Around 14 major political and religious parties and civil society organisations at the MQM-P’s recently held multi-party conference rejected the bill and criticised the PPP leadership for the move.”

Khan said the biased PPP government was not ready to devolve powers to the LG institutions and empower those whose forefathers had created the country. MQM-P MPA Kunwar Naveed Jamil said the women at the protest were only demanding that education, health, solid waste management, infrastructure, the KDA, the SBCA and other departments should be handed over to the elected city council so that the city governments could solve the problems of the people in the right way.

“The biased Sindh government collects 400 billion rupees in taxes from Karachi every year, and the same amount of money is collected by officials and ministers of the PPP’s government in the name of bribery,” he alleged.

MQM-P MNA Kishwar Zehra, said the Sindh government had amended the local government act to make it blacker, but residents of the province would not allow it to do so. Other speakers also accused the PPP of deliberately promoting ethnicity for political gains after losing all credibility among the people.

Saeed sees conspiracy

Sindh Information and Labour Minister, Saeed Ghani said the MQM had been attempting to do bloodshed in Karachi just for its own political gains, but he is pleased that the people of the city are no more lured by this campaign.

Addressing a press conference on Wednesday, he said an attempt was being made to cause discord in Karachi on ethnic grounds on the pretext the provincial local government law and system. He said the local government system was not so easy a thing that every person could understand it.

“We will not let them [the MQM] commit terrorism in Karachi again, and they should keep this thing in mind. We even resisted them during the time when they used to shoot and kill people and stuff their bodies into gunny bags,” Ghani said while talking about the MQM-Pakistan.

He said every political party, except the MQM, reserved the right to question the performance of the Pakistan Peoples Party in Karachi. “This is the party that is responsible for ruining education in the city, and making the builders ran away from the city, as terrorism got nurtured in the city. They are therefore nobody to say that we have ruined Karachi.”

The information minister said they had been doing their best to foil the attempt being made to cause hatred, disunity, ethnic strife in Karachi and bring back the era of Altaf Hussain on the pretext of the newly passed local government amendment bill. He said they had also been discharging the responsibility of letting other political parties know about “this conspiracy”.

He said the latest amendment bill passed by the Sindh Assembly was aimed at improving the Sindh Local Government Act 2013. He said the office of Karachi’s mayor had been empowered to an extent that certain of the new powers had not been given under the Sindh Local Government Act of 2001.

The minister said the provincial government had for the very first time empowered Karachi’s mayor to chair the solid waste management agency to be established in the city, and no earlier local government law had given powers to the mayor to collect waste from the city.

He said the government had empowered the elected local government representatives to get a supervisory role in over 10 of its departments, including education, health and policing. To a question, Ghani said, the MQM had once again attempted to hijack the city at gunpoint and stuff votes into the ballot boxes in its favour by any mean. He said that gone were time when a resident of Karachi was informed on reaching the polling station that his vote had been polled and even votes of the dead persons belonging to the city had been cast.

He said the MQM had secured votes through honest means only in the general elections of 1988 and 1990, but afterwards the election process in the city had been marred. “We do understand that they do have a limited vote bank in the city, but the same should not be used as the basis to cause violence and bloodshed in Karachi.”

Ghani said the PPP had made a difficult decision to make MQM a part of the coalition government in 2008 just to protect the residents and businesspersons of Karachi “from these terrorists”. He admitted that the late Benazir Bhutto had gone to Nine Zero as the PPP at that time had the understanding that the MQM had held the mandate of urban areas of Sindh.

He said the MQM had become upset because it had sensed its utter defeat in the upcoming local government polls to be held in Karachi, as was evidenced by the cantonment elections and NA-249 by-polls recently held in the city.

‘Trial for war crime’

Sindh Local Government Minister Syed Nasir Hussain Shah has said the people know well the reality of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), which has learnt nothing in its political history except causing ethnic conflict in Karachi.

A statement issued on Wednesday quoted the local government minister as saying that the MQM should face trial for committing war crimes. Commenting on the statement of MQM leader Amir Khan, in which he said he had spent more time in jail than the age of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Shah said the Muttahida leader had remained imprisoned because of the cases instituted against him related to violence, murders and mayhem in Karachi. “You shouldn’t have the courage to take credit for committing such acts,” he said.

The minister added that the MQM had been responsible for ruining the municipal agencies of Karachi as their leaders still wanted to become the viceroy. He said the Pacca Qila incident of Hyderabad in the past had been a conspiracy against the PPP as the MQM had played an important role in that intrigue.

According to Shah, the MQM had used every evil mean to defame the PPP and it would become the ultimate loser of the latest move of the Sindh government to assume the control of Abbasi Shaheed Hospital as the ghost employees related to the opposition party would lose jobs. He said the people of Karachi had already rejected Mustafa Kamal and wanted to take

revenge of that from the Sindh government.