KARACHI: Tyranny, fair polls cannot go together: PPP leader
By Our Reporter
KARACHI, July 25: PPP’s deputy parliamentary leader in the National Assembly Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi has said that when candidates for different slots of the local government are being kidnapped and prevented from submitting their nomination papers, and journalists are also being kidnapped, the government’s claim of holding free, fair and transparent election seems to be a myth.
He expressed these views at the Meet the Press programme of the Karachi Press Club on Monday during which he lamented, as he put it, ‘violation of electoral rules and code of conduct by the ruling coalition’.
The Makhdoom came hard on waderas and other linchpin of the exploitative system who had deprived people of their rights, and claimed that people were yearning for rising against such forces.
In reply to a question, he said a PPP worker was not demoralized, but was conscious of his responsibility in the given situation. He was confident that his party workers would take the current challenge in the same spirit in which they had responded to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s struggle for the emancipation of the poor and for “roti, kapra aur makan for everyone”.
He said the people must rise against those elements who usurped their rights. The feudal mindset and the federal government’s refusal to accept rights of the federating units had turned the former East Pakistan into Bangladesh and the same concerns are brewing in Sindh, Balochistan and Seraiki areas, according to him.
On the newly-constituted NFC, Makhdoom Qureshi said that mere reconstitution of the NFC would not solve the problem unless the complexities of the situation were understood and taken into consideration.
He said that nothing was expected soon to happen because it would upset the budget allocated at all the tiers. Therefore, he said, nothing was expected before the next budget. Until then, he predicted, there would be more mini-budgets, making the poor poorer and the rich richer.
The PPP leader said that to ensure free, fair and transparent election, the civil society required a free press, but the arrest of journalists clearly indicated the regime’s plan to gag the press so that its wrongdoings and policy of denying the people their constitutional rights were not exposed and contested.
He alleged that provincial governments of Sindh and Punjab were not cooperating with the Election Commission of Pakistan and were directly interfering in the non-party elections.
“For the government, the LB election is party-based and for us, it is non-party-based,” he remarked, and claimed that judiciary was not being allowed to play its role, nor did the election commission enjoy that freedom it normally should.
Makhdoom Qureshi took exception to the prime minister’s announcement of a development package from Hyderabad through the Muttahida Qaumi Movement after the election schedule had been made public. He said that if the prime minister would have announced the package before the election schedule or after the election was over, the PPP would not have objected to it. He, nevertheless, made it clear that his criticism of the timing and platform did not mean that PPP was opposed to any development package.
The Makhdoom, the fire-brand former nazim of Multan, said that the Awam Dost panel would not leave the field open for the regime ‘despite its manipulations’ because people wanted to get rid of the regime which had plunged the country into a vicious cycle of growing unemployment, insecurity, soaring prices and host of other problems.
Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi, who has considerable following in Tharparkar and its adjoining areas, slammed Chief Minister Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim for his alleged atrocities, and remarked: “Arbab Rahim is the most hated man in Tharparkar. He is surviving with the help corrupt officials and opportunists.”
Commenting on the violations of electoral rules, he asked the chief election commissioner that if holding of election was the job of the election commission, then why the delimitation had been done by the chief ministers and others.
He regretted that while India had emerged as a regional power and developed a new strategic relationship with the US, Pakistan had not been able to subscribe a system of governance for itself.
