HYDERABAD: Pakistan Teh­reek-i-Insaf (PTI) leader and former Sindh chief minister Liaquat Ali Jatoi has urged the judiciary to exercise its constitutional authority in putting a halt to the “massive corruption” in Sindh by getting the provincial assembly dissolved and removing the government.

An interim dispensation should be installed immediately and proper accountability of the government and lawmakers be started under the judiciary, he said while addressing a press conference outside the residence of PTI leader Aneesa Waliullah here on Thursday. Mustansar Billah and other party leaders accompanied Mr Jatoi.

Several activists of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) as well as some retired government officials announced their joining of the PTI at the press conference.

Mr Jatoi described the Sindh Assembly as a “rubber-stamp house produced through rigging”. Elaborating, he claimed that “governance is seen nowhere while cronies of [PPP co-chairman Asif Ali] Zardari have been swindling people, pocketing all development funds and destroying health, education, agriculture and other departments leaving the ordinary people even without safe drinking water”.

He said PTI would not accept a caretaker set-up in which PPP was given any representation because it [PPP] always rigged polls and such a set-up would again do the same to defeat its opponents.

The provincial government had lost its writ to the extent that it was unable to make sugar millers comply with its notification regarding the minimum rate of Rs182/40kg for sugar cane. Cane growers were clamouring for a reasonable price to save themselves from heavy losses but the government remained unmoved even after some of the growers torched their produce in sheer disappointment, he noted.

“Everybody knows that more than 50 per cent of sugar mills in Sindh are directly or indirectly owned by Asif Zardari,” he said.

Cronies of Zardari who included former information minister Sharjeel Inam Memon had been looting the masses, he alleged, and observed that the latter, facing a case of corruption to the tune of billions of rupees, was showered with rose petals by the PPP when he was brought to court for a hearing.

The PTI leader claimed that PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari always looked scared while delivering speeches at the party’s public meetings as he was made to read out the given scripts.

“It’s learnt that [Asif] Zardari and Bilawal [Bhutto-Zardari] are trying to become the president and prime minister, respectively, in case their party comes in a position to form the next government at the Centre,” he said.

Mr Jatoi recalled his political struggle of the past and said he and his family had to suffer a lot as the “Zardari league” implicated them in concocted cases for exposing corruption by the PPP co-chairman and his cronies. “However, they could not suppress our voice through such tactics as we only spoke what the masses felt.”

He said he joined the PTI as its chairman Imran Khan was a clean man and the party had the potential to wipe out corruption from the country. He said corruption, nepotism and favouritism would find no place under the PTI rule.

In reply to a question, Mr Jatoi said his party would not form an alliance with any party. “We will definitely win majority in Sindh without forming an alliance with some other party,” he said.

Published in Dawn, December 15th, 2017