HYDERABAD: People resent backdoor power-sharing deals: SDF
Bureau Report
HYDERABAD, Sept 25: The Sindh Democratic Forum (SDF) has cautioned the political parties in favour of providing safe passage to President Gen Pervez Musharraf that people are against such backdoor power sharing deals, which serve only to change faces and not the system.
The forum, at its recent meeting presided over by its convener, Abrar Kazi, expressed concern over the reports about government’s implicit and explicit threats of imposing martial law or emergency if President Musharraf was not re-elected.
The forum members were surprised that while the world had entered the 21st century, blazing new trails of social and technological advancement, the country was moving backwards, paralysed under the weight of Gen Musharraf and his hangers-on.“ Gen Musharraf, who posed before the West as an egalitarian and modern leader, had caused immeasurable grief to the country in his eight years’ undemocratic and authoritarian rule,” they said and added that his cronies were engaged in the most worthless and wholly unnecessary debate of whether the chief of the army staff could become an elected president of the country.
“More than half the population of the country lives below poverty line. Unemployment has reached catastrophic levels, all the indices of human development including education, health, provision of safe drinking water, sanitation, and transport show total collapse and the level of corruption has skyrocketed from millions to billions.
“Despite the fact that most of the government departments and corporations are being run by military men including educational institutions, government efficiency has hit rock bottom,” the forum leaders said.
Above all else, the danger to the security of life and property in the country today had become so acute that even Gen Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz were shown inaugurating mega projects in the most ludicrous way uncovering plaques in safe confines miles away from project sites for fear of their lives.
They said that Sindhis had suffered the most under the dictatorial rule of Gen Musharraf who had installed a dummy chief minister in the province with the powers being exercised by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement -- a party that the Supreme Court of Canada had declared a terrorist outfit.
The party had got withdrawn cases of heinous crimes registered against its members and provided them jobs in police and other government departments, they said.
“Sindhis hang their heads in shame when they hear Pir Pagaro declaring that he is a servant of GHQ,” they remarked.
If Gen Musharraf and his sycophants had any sense of patriotism and an infinitesimal amount of consideration for their country they should realise that the people of Pakistan wished to see the general and his cronies gone and the military back to barracks, they stressed.
They should realise that they were playing a dangerous game of pitting people against people for the sake of one man’s illegal and immoral desire to keep sticking to power, they added.
