KARACHI: Criticising the government and opposition for neglecting the people’s problems, Pak Sarzameen Party chairman Syed Mustafa Kamal has said he will present a viable roadmap to steer the country out of the “present crisis” in his party’s upcoming public meeting scheduled for Nov 8.

He was speaking at the ‘Meet the Press’ programme of the Karachi Press Club here on Tuesday.

He was accompanied by senior party leadership, including PSP president Anis Kaimkhani.

Mr Kamal said that his party’s Nov 8 public meeting at Bagh-i-Jinnah, being held in response to the 11-party Pakistan Democratic Movement’s Oct 18 rally, would cause “jitters” within the government and the opposition’s ranks.

He said the political atmosphere of the country seemed to suggest as if elections were round the corner.

He said the opposition should tender resignations from assemblies if it was so serious about toppling the government.

He claimed that the plan he would present in Sunday’s public meeting would be acceptable to all.

Missing persons

The PSP chief said that the problems of missing persons might have increased because of the way the opposition raised the ‘shame-shame’ slogans while standing with the missing persons’ families in Quetta recently.

He recalled that around 550 workers of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement were missing when he and Anis Kaimkhani returned to the country in March 2016.

“We never try to make political point-scoring on the issue. We talked openly and behind closed doors and took guarantee of them [missing persons] that they had been used for politics and they will never choose that path again,” he said. Today, 470 have been recovered and only 59 workers are still missing and efforts are under way to bring them back home,” he said.

PPP ‘root cause’ of problems

Lashing out at the opposition alliance’s Karachi public meeting, he said that despite ruling Sindh for the past 12 years, the Pakistan Peoples Party presented itself as a “revolutionary” opposition party at the event hiding the fact that it was the “root cause” of all civic problems in the metropolis.

He said PML-N leader Maryam Nawaz should have asked the host of the PDM rally, the ruling PPP, as to why dog-bite cases were on the rise in Sindh and why the chief justice of Pakistan and the army chief came to Karachi following destruction caused by rains.

Mr Kamal said he was happy to see the Orange Train project in Punjab, but it was a matter of great disappointment when he saw Qingqi rickshaws plying on Karachi’s roads.

Published in Dawn, November 4th, 2020