HYDERABAD: Muttahida Qaumi Move­ment-Pakistan (MQM-P) convener Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui has said that the party is facing a treatment in the country that no other political party is facing.

He said there was no other party whose offices remained closed and activists remained missing. Without naming the Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP), he said, his party’s opponents were paid Rs10m each.

He was speaking at a programme held at Kohinoor Chowk to celebrate MQM’s victory in the polls of the Cantonment Board of Hyderabad (CBH) the other day.

MQM senior deputy convenor Amir Khan also spoke.

Sweets were distributed followed by a display of fireworks. Party workers brought out rallies from different areas and gathered at Kohinoor Chowk.

Every action had a reaction, Dr Maqbool said, adding that an MQM’s district office was attacked, but the people of Hyderabad answered that with their vote on Sept 12.

He said that if those elements had some sense of remorse, they should apologize to the Mohajir nation. Those people were sent to Hyderabad to lose their seats, he added.

“These people are always sent to keep others engaged,” he said. He said the people of Hyderabad had however dashed their hopes. What the MQM was facing today in the country, no other party was faced with.

He said that all of its offices remained closed and its workers remained missing. He said it was only the MQM whose activists were languishing in jails.

He said those testing times had entered the final phase now. “The people of Hyderabad and workers of the MQM are not aware of the fact who they had fought with,” he remarked.

He said that everyone knew that Pakistan would be protected once its reins were in the hands of those whose forefathers had created it. For the MQM, he said, Hyderabad was the city that protected it and came up to its expectations.

“Whenever we start losing courage, Hyderabad came to our [MQM] rescue”, he said. Alluding to Syed Mustafa Kamal of the PSP, he said that mentioning someone was always tantamount to giving them new lease of life and added that those poised to bury the MQM got the answer from Hyderabad. “They were given Rs10m each from the national kitty,” he said.

He said: “The Mohajirs made Britishers run from the Indian subcontinent, then you [MQM’s opponents] are non entity.”

He said his forefathers had produced Jinnah’s Pakistan, but the present rulers had given people the Bhutto’s Pakistan. He said: “We will get the Jinnah’s Pakistan out of debris of the Pakistan of Bhutto,” he said.

Addressing the event, Amir Khan said that those who wanted to burry the MQM had themselves been buried in the CBH’s polls. “We are not facing them [PSP}, but some bigger force,” he said. Expressing reservations over the Cantonment elections in Karachi, he said: “But the results of the MQM in the CBH elections havr filled the gap.”

He alleged that the defeated elements got money from the Pakistan Peoples Party only to damage the Mohajirs. “We will not name the traitors from now onwards,” he said. He said that those talking about having their chief minister elected in 2018 faced another defeat.

MQM district organiser Zafar Siddiqui said that MQM activists worked day in and day out. He said the MQM Hyderabad had said that it would respond on Sept 12 to the attack on its office through polls. He said that those who were busy in grouping and factionalism were not accepted by anyone.

Published in Dawn, September 15th, 2021