HYDERABAD: Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) president Anis Ahmed Kaimkhani has said Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s senior deputy convener Amir Khan is trying to pit Mohajir against Mohajir, something he has done his entire life.

Kaimkhani said at a press conference at Pakistan House in Latifabad on Friday evening that Amir Khan was inciting workers to clash with each other. Nineteen MQM activists were killed when MQM Haqiqi was formed in 1992, he recalled.

“What sort of language are you using Amir Khan,” he said referring to Khan’s statement after cantonment board elections that “they [MQM] will not take names of traitors from now onwards”.

He asked if Amir Khan had no other job except declaring people traitors and asked him to stop doing so. “People know you [Amir Khan] well and also know me and Mustafa Kamal,” he said.

He warned Amir Khan to stop using this language failing which he would start unfolding his history. “The few words I speak should be understood correctly,” he said, adding “these people” pitted worker against worker and then left.

‘We are founders of MQM and it still belongs to us’

“This MQM belongs to us and workers. We had created it and I had suffered torture in Adiala and Hyderabad central prisons for its sake,” he said. All MQM workers should know that PSP’s doors were open for them, he added.

He said that he and Mustafa Kamal had not betrayed Altaf Hussain but revolted against him. When he and Kamal could fight Altaf, Amir Khan was a non-entity, they were not the ones who had occupied the party and knew well how to honour relations with friends and foes, he said.

He said that MQM workers should recognise who was the murderer and they should not be misguided by Amir Khan’s harangue. “You had tendered apology in 2011 to MQM and heirs of MQM’s martyrs because you had killed them and, therefore, you had to apologise. It was a precondition which you had to fulfil. It was me who had come to meet you in jail,” he said.

Kaimkhani asked what kind of work MQM would do after winning seven seats in Cantonment Board Hyderabad (CBH) election. It was convenient for Amir Khan to claim rigging in polls.

He advised his party to do more hard work after defeat in CBH election and termed it Hyderabad’s defeat, not the PSP’s. His party did not have money while the opponents had loads of “illegitimate wealth” amassed through corruption in Hyderabad Municipal Corporation, he said.

He said that PSP was so cash-strapped it could not even publish its electoral material. PSP was not a tonga party and would not give up its struggle, which it had been waging for the past five years although it had not won any election so far, he said.

About alleged attack on MQM zonal office during CBH polls campaign, he said that their workers never touched any office when their president and chairman were present. The moment they went to enquire after health of party activist Iftikhar Siddiqui MQM activists raised slogans, which led to a fist-fight, he said.

He admitted that the clash should not have taken place in the first place and it was he who had himself separated the fighting party workers. Future belonged to PSP and whenever it was elected, it would resolve peoples’ problems within six months, he claimed.

He said that PPP had snatched jobs on ethnic grounds and Sindh chief minister and his ministers never held a meeting for Hyderabad. Imran Khan regularly visited Lahore where he did not win but PTI had won seats in Karachi, therefore, the prime minister should visit Karachi even for holding a public meeting, he said.

He condemned raise in fuel prices and said cancellation of Pakistan-New Zealand series was disappointing. Price hike had made peoples’ lives miserable but Imran Khan kept repeating “ghabrana nahin hai”.

Published in Dawn, September 18th, 2021