PESHAWAR: The Qaumi Watan Party (QWP) has urged all the political parties in the province to unite and raise voice for the rights of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as successive governments have totally ignored it.

Speaking during a party meeting at its secretariat here on Saturday, QWP chairman Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao said that the people had attached expectations to the incumbent government due to its slogan of change, but it failed to plead its case and rather got entangled in non-issues of protest sit-ins.

He said that there was a big gap in the words and deeds of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf leadership. On the one hand it had asked its MNAs to resign from the National Assembly, on the other it continued to cling to power in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Mr Sherpao urged Governor Sardar Mehtab Ahmed Khan to ask Chief Minister Pervez Khattak whether he supported the civil disobedience call given by PTI chairman Imran Khan or not. “It is a violation of the Constitution that head of a political party, which is leading a coalition government, has given a call for civil disobedience,” he remarked.

Sherpao sees big gap in words and actions of PTI leadership

He said that the province was already facing financial crisis due to problems like militancy, floods and mismanagement during the previous government, and now the unwise slogans like civil disobedience would add to the crisis. He alleged that Mr Khattak and his cabinet members were using state machinery for political interests.

Mr Sherpao said that the PTI leadership was playing politics over the issues of Pakhtuns to gain political support in Punjab. He claimed that the opposition parties had extended support to the Nawaz Sharif government to strengthen democracy otherwise the centre had always ignored the smaller federating units.

“We stand by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to frustrate the efforts to derail democracy and to protect the Constitution,” he claimed.

The QWP chief said that the federal government ignored Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which had been facing a host of issues.

He said that hundreds of thousands of people were living as internally displaced persons in camps under squalid conditions, but the government was least bothered to provide them any relief.

He said that his party would soon hold a conference to find out solutions to the problems being faced by Pakhtuns. QWP parliamentary leader Sikandar Sherpao, retired justice Shahjehan Khan, Hashim Babar and others attended the meeting where office-bearers for the Peshawar zone were also elected.

Published in Dawn, August 31, 2014