HYDERABAD: Pak Sarzameen Party chairman Mustafa Kamal has said that his party is preparing for local bodies polls as it is here to stay and not to run away.

He said at a general workers meeting in Latifabad Unit-6 late on Sunday night that those who had thought that PSP would shut its offices were mistaken as this did not happen because the party was here to stay.

He said that he was witnessing great enthusiasm among party workers despite the unfortunate results. Hypocrites would face elimination; if PSP had won seats it would have made ‘people’ restless. He and Anis Qaimkhani would not have left MQM if it had intended to put things on the right track, he said.

He said that PSP’s polling agents were expelled from polling stations. If even a single vote cast for dolphin had been counted in the presence of PSP’s polling agents, the party would have happily accepted the results, he said.

Mr Kamal said that results from as far as Kohlu and Fata reached in time but those from Karachi and Hyderabad took three days to be announced. PSP’s polling agents were expelled because they were not “agents” of anyone and if they had become agents, PSP would have swept polls, he said.

He said that those who had won 17 seats in Karachi previously could secure only four seats of National Assembly. He disclosed that Amir Khan who had conceded in 1992 that he was helped by agencies would certainly disclose one day how the four seats had been obtained.

He said that despite Altaf Hussain’s calls for boycott of polls, long queues of voters were witnessed outside polling stations in Karachi and Hyderabad. PSP had organised its largest general workers meeting in Karachi after July 25 polls to prove that no one could defeat the courage of his party workers, he said.

He said that PSP was there to bridge ethnic divide while the number of missing persons had dropped to 200 from 500 and doors of shuhada graveyard had been padlocked.

He urged workers not to lose heart and convert their anger into energy to put it to use in local government election. Those who were trying to revive Mohajir narrative were enemies of Mohajirs, he said.

PSP president Anis Qaimkhani was also present at the gathering.

Published in Dawn, August 7th, 2018