KARACHI: Pak Sarzameen Party chairman Syed Mustafa Kamal on Saturday alleged that Sindh’s Governor House had been reduced to a “political office” of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) which was being used to “crush” political opponents.

Kamal told reporters after appearing in court in an accountability reference here that the PTI was trying to save “corrupt and terrorist” allies for the sake of its precarious government in the centre.

“Do whatever you want to do to me but the PSP will go to any lengths to get complete and fair count of the population of Karachi,” he said.

He said that Prime Minister Imran Khan should reverse his decision to endorse the result of 2017 population census. “This move [acceptance of the results] is not only deepening sense of deprivation among people of Karachi but it will also result in creating terrorists,” he said.

He claimed that no matter how corrupt or criminal one might be, no one would touch him as long as he supported the PTI. “But if you are against Imran Khan, then you will certainly receive NAB notices and also be declared as terrorist,” he said.

He said that former Karachi mayor Wasim Akhtar was blamed for widespread corruption during his tenure but he was not even summoned by the National Accountability Bureau because his party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan, was an ally of the PTI-led federal government.

He said that recently an anti-state rally was taken out in interior of Sindh on the birth anniversary of G.M. Syed in which the participants had carried posters of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “Where is the state now? Did the rally have silent support of PPP? This criminal silence means the Sindh government is supporting anti-Pakistan parties,” he said.

Published in Dawn, January 24th, 2021