SHIKARPUR: Former leader of the opposition in the Sindh Assembly Shaharyar Khan Mahar on Thursday said that the ongoing bitter exchanges among rival political parties was putting a question mark over chances of general elections in the country.

At the same time, he observed, certain political quarters were manoeuvring to foment an atmosphere of confusion and confrontation between political forces and the judiciary.

Mr Mahar was speaking to local reporters after offering his condolence to the family of a senior journalist, Sardar Ali Sanjrani, over his recent death.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Functional (PML-F) leader was of the view that the political unrest might continue for months making it very difficult for the institutions concerned to go for general elections before or within the scheduled time.

Mr Mahar criticised those political forces which were out to foment confusion and confrontation in the country. He, however, said that an atmosphere conducive to general elections could be restored only after uprooting terrorism and corruption. He noted that corruption had plagued government departments, especially those dealing in the development sector.

He alleged that the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party fostered corruption in Sindh for its ulterior motives.

Accusing PPP of deceiving its electorate, Mr Mahar said the party in the previous elections had retained support in the name of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto and promised to continue the two popular leaders’ political programmes but after retaining its rule over Sindh, it forgot about the Bhuttos’ public welfare programmes and, instead continued to plunder the kitty by indulging in massive corruption.

As a result, he said, people of Sindh never got their issues resolved and got no relief.

Commenting on the Sindh Assembly’s performance over the past four years, Mr Mahar said the treasury benches did their best to help PPP meet its political ends and provide all possible relief to its leaders. PPP lawmakers were supporting every legislation that benefited their party and leadership without caring for the general public’s welfare, he added.

The PML-F leader said that a grand anti-PPP alliance would be formed in Sindh to hand a humiliating defeat to that party and its allies in the next general elections.

He hinted that the PML-F, Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F), Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P), Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) and several other parties would be part of such an alliance.

He ruled out possibility of influential Mahar brothers siding with the PPP in the next elections.

LARKANA: Sindh National Front (SNF) vice chairman Amir Bukhsh Bhutto on Thursday advised the PML-N-led government to go to the masses and seek a fresh mandate now when the apex court had disqualified its top leader. He also described the ruling PPP in Sindh as a “band of big thugs and thieves”.

Addressing a meeting of SNF district chapter in Shahdadkot city, Mr Bhutto referred to the recent event in which the Rangers had taken over security of the Islamabad accountability court when PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif was to appear before its judge and the latest event where the Rangers’ force withdrew from the National Assembly on its own. The SNF leader observed that the ruling party had lost control of vital institutions. “Therefore, the PML-N must now seek a fresh public mandate,” he said.

He claimed that the so-called democratic dispensations that ruled over the country after General Ziaul Haq’s demise had a track record of “ruthless plunder and traumatising the Constitution”. Such things brought the country to the brink of devastation, he observed.

After accountability of the PML-N leadership, it was the turn of PPP’s accountability now, he said, and added that the ruling party in Sindh would face a similar fate. “Big thugs and thieves are sitting over there,” he remarked.

He believed that no adverse public reaction would come if corrupt people would be taken to task, saying that people were fed up with corrupt elements.

Published in Dawn, October 6th, 2017