February 26, 2008	Tuesday	Safar 18, 1429

HYDERABAD, Feb 25: The PPP will respect the mandate of all political parties but it will not yield to blackmail so far as the formation of government is concerned, says MPA-elect Pir Mazharul Haq.

He was addressing a press conference at the press club here on Monday.

Criticising the MQM for adopting a threatening posture, he said the cardinal principle of democracy was the rule of majority and that the majority party had the exclusive right to form government.

He said that PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari had clearly stated that a coalition government would be formed in the centre with the help of the PML-N and the ANP but as far as Sindh was concerned, he had never made such a commitment.

He said all Mr Zardari had said was that he would try to take along all political parties but it did not mean that all parties would be included in the government.

If everyone was to sit on treasury benches then “who will sit in the opposition” which had no less an important role to play, the former Sindh law minister said.

Referring to the statement of the Karachi city district nazim, he said that he had been elected on non-party basis but he had adopted a threatening posture towards the PPP and even pressurised the business community to issue a statement on power sharing.

He pointed out that in the 2002 elections, the PPP had won majority of seats in Sindh but a ‘non-entity’ Ali Mohammad Mahar was thrust upon Sindh as chief minister and the majority party had to sit on opposition benches for five years.

He recalled that in 1988, the MQM was included in the government but it parted ways with the PPP. Similarly, MQM was a part of the PML-N government on two occasions but it had opted to leave the government.

Referring to the assassination of party chairperson Benazir Bhutto, he said that she had informed President Pervez Musharraf through a letter that she would be eliminated by the ‘people sitting in the Musharraf camp’ but no inquiry had been initiated, adding that the government had taken the matter non-seriously.

He said countries were fragmented from within and not from outside and cited the example of the former East Pakistan in this regard. He pointed out that the Awami League had won a landslide victory in the elections in the now defunct East Pakistan while the PPP had emerged victorious in the West wing. In order to prolong his rule as president, General Yahya Khan refused to accept the people’s mandate and tried to create differences between the two major parties, resulting in the disintegration of Pakistan, Mazharul Haq said.

He assured the MQM that it would be treated in a much better way than what PPP had suffered during the past five years and the MQM would be given its due share in development funds.

He, however, made it clear that people like Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim and Liaquat Ali Jatoi would be made accountable for atrocities they had committed against PPP workers.

He said Mr Jatoi had occupied thousands of acres of land in the kutcha area and obtained power connections from tubewells on the pretext of electrification of villages for which he will be tried. He said inquiries would also be initiated into the use of sub-standard material in the construction of flyovers and roads.

MQM: MQM MNAs-elect Salahuddin and Syed Tayyab Hussain have criticised PPP leaders ‘for their narrow-mindedness’ and reminded them that the MQM had received a ‘massive mandate’ in Karachi and other urban areas of Sindh.

In a statement faxed to Dawn, they said that the MQM had acknowledged the mandate given to other political parties and according to the rules of democracy, other political parties, including the PPP, should also acknowledge MQM’s mandate.