LARKANA: Pakistan Peoples Party Sindh president, Nisar Ahmed Khuhro, has questioned the safe passage given to former president retired General Pervez Musharraf while he was facing trial in the Benazir Bhutto assassination case, as well as other cases.

Mr Khuhro, who is also the senior provincial minister for food and parliamentary affairs, was addressing a news conference in the local press club on Monday. Other PPP leaders including Senator Saeed Ghani, Aajiz Dhamra, Waqar Mehdi and Rashid Rabbani were also present.

He told a questioner that people should better ask the judiciary to tell them how he [Gen Musharraf], who had also violated the Constitution, left the country and “has now, in his statement, hit at the credibility of former army chief retired General Raheel Sharif”.

Mr Khuhro also commented on different rumours about PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari’s homecoming. “You media people always have your own interpretations of Mr Zardari’s and Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari’s going abroad and returning home. I will tell you now that he has returned to his country to support Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari,” said Mr Khuhro.

Explaining the PPP chairman’s statement about contacts with the children of his maternal uncle, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, Mr Khuhro said: “The doors of our heart are always open to them. What Mr Bhutto-Zardari said is the ‘positive thinking’ of our chairman ... the party’s doors will also open [to Mir’s children] as the doors of our heart are already open to them.”

The senior PPP leader, in reply to a question about the recent statement by Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz leader, Talal Chaudhry, remarked: “Who is this man? He should better ask his Chief Minister, Shahbaz Sharif, that why women were burning themselves alive in Punjab; and why he [the CM] has repeatedly been asking extremists to leave the province; and from where the term ‘Punjabi Taliban’ had emerged.”

Referring to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s known association with former military ruler General Ziaul Haq, Mr Khuhro repeated PPP’s long-standing stance that weapons supplies found their way into Karachi during that regime. Even [container-mounted] trailers of the National Logistics Cell were used for transporting them,” he claimed. “But now, peace [has been] restored in Sindh,” he added.

Regarding his party’s future course of action, Mr Khuhro said that the option of forging a grand political alliance [against the ruling PML-N] was wide open.

When asked whether it was also an option for the PPP to launch an anti-government campaign alone, Mr Khuhro in his indirect reply said: “The PPP has never taken a solo flight in its history.”

Even during [PPP founder chairman] Z.A. Bhutto’s days, the Qayyum League was with it; then all political parties joined hands with it when it launched the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD) against Gen Ziaul Haq’s dictatorship; the PPP also took others along when the Pakistan Democratic Alliance, ARD and GDA were formed.”

Briefing the media about the programme organised at Bhuttos’ mausoleum in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh Bhutto to observe the 9th death anniversary of slain prime minister Benazir Bhutto on Tuesday (today), Mr Khuhro said a huge number of people was expected and, as such, elaborate arrangements had been made.

He said the proceedings would start at 1pm with a poetry recital (Mushaira) to pay homage to Benazir Bhutto. He said speeches by PPP leaders would start at 2pm. Stringent security measures had been taken for complete peace during the programme and for safety of participants.

PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari would make his speech at 3.45pm which would be followed by the speech of Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, he said, adding that the programme would come to an end at around 5.20pm.

Mr Khuhro said that the party’s central executive committee would meet after the programme at Naudero House.

Published in Dawn, December 27th, 2016