KARACHI: Leaders of the Pakistan Peoples Party, Karachi chapter, have said that despite provocative speeches by Muttahida Qaumi Movement leaders the PPP has goodwill towards all.

Farsighted people in the MQM should ponder on this as the Muttahida had remained a coalition partner in the Sindh government and had been signatories to the three resolutions passed by the Sindh Assembly with consensus against division of Sindh. Not only the PPP but each and every individual in Sindh was against the division of their motherland, they said.

PPP Karachi chapter president Abdul Qadir Patel, Senator Taj Haider, deputy speaker of the Sindh Assembly Syeda Shehla Raza and veteran party leader Prof N.D. Khan said at a press conference at the PPP media cell here on Sunday that the MQM’s protest was provocative and uncalled for.

PPP central leader Syed Khursheed Ahmad Shah had neither abused the word ‘Mohajir’ nor said anything wrong; he only advised the community to become owners and not tenants in Sindh, they said.

They made a fervent appeal to the Muttahida leaders to drop the non-issue and have mercy on Karachi, which had already suffered a lot.

“The factual position is that the grand Oct 18 PPP public meeting has become a turning point for the MQM,” they said and stressed if the talk of dividing Sindh continued, there would be no reconciliation policy.

The PPP leaders, who were flanked by their colleagues including Senator Saeed Ghani, Syed Waqar Mehdi, Rashid Rabbani, Syed Najme Alam, Habibuddin Junedi and Mirza Maqbool, said that Khursheed Shah’s statement was being blown out of proportion and being used as a pretext to fan religious extremism.

They asked why the party which claimed to be a secular, liberal and democratic organisation was bent upon promoting religious extremism with the help of fatwas.

They said that though Khursheed Shah had not said anything wrong still he extended an apology over it the same day after the MQM objected to it. But Muttahida leaders whipped up the issue and blew it out of proportion.

“Khursheed Shah is being targeted because he foiled the ‘London Plan’ by calling a joint session of parliament. Apparently, there were only two parties in on the plan but now it has come to the fore there were others also behind the attempts to derail democracy,” they said.

They asked if the word ‘Mohajir’ was so sacred why the MQM had dropped it from its party name and why the flags of Afaq Ahmad’s party which had the word ‘Mohajir’ written on them were routinely burned and desecrated.

“The time has gone when people were pitted against one another to garner ready support by instigating such issues. In the past Urdu-speaking people were pitted against Sindhi, Balochis, Punjabis and Pathans. Now everyone who lives in Sindh is a Sindhi. Urdu-speaking brothers have the same rights as the Sindhi-speaking people,” they said.

They said the president of the country and the supreme commander of Pakistan was an Urdu-speaking man while governor of Sindh was a nominee of MQM who had become the longest serving governor of the province.

They said the attendance of millions of people in the Oct 18th PPP public meeting in which people had arrived from each all over Pakistan, Sindh and in particular Karachi was contrary to MQM’s assumptions.

They said that attempts were being made to further vitiate the situation in Karachi, which deserved condemnation and appealed to Muttahida leaders to drop the non-issue and have mercy on Karachi which had already suffered a lot.

Published in Dawn, October 27th, 2014