KARACHI, Nov 17: Muttahida Qaumi Movement chief Altaf Hussain has advised the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, PML-N and Pakistan People’s Party to raise the slogan of ‘go army go’ and ‘go ISI go’ instead of ‘go Musharraf go’. He urged them to move a bill in the assembly for a trial of those who had supported military coups and abrogation of the Constitution in the past.

Addressing his party’s labour division on Sunday, more details of which were released here on Monday, Mr Hussain declared that the MQM would lend its support to these parties if they moved such a bill aimed at declaring armed forces’ and ISI’s involvement in politics ‘an act of high treason’.

According to the MQM chief, a change may not come through statements and press conferences delivered in the assembly’s cafeteria, but through well thought out legislation.

He criticized the opposition parties for not accepting Gen Musharraf as President in uniform and wondered that they had no such objection in the case of Gen Ziaul Haq. The opposition parties, he said, should also demand punishment to those generals who had taken over affairs of the country in the absence of the army chief while the latter was on a visit abroad.

Altaf Hussain recalled that when his party had opposed involvement of the army and ISI in politics, it was accused of maligning the armed forces. But now, he added, these parties were doing the same.

The strangleholds of feudals and religious parties supporting the military rule would reach their logical end only when the movement of middle-class launched by the MQM would triumph, he asserted.