LARKANA: Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, who also holds the office of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s vice chairman, on Monday spoke of his decades-long political affiliation to Sindh and undying affection for Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto to tell the people of Larkana that Asif Ali Zardari was not a true successor to the Bhuttos.

He asked the Larkana people whether they had the courage to “liberate Larkana from the clutches of Zardari”.

Addressing a public meeting in the city during PTI’s Ghotki-Karachi ‘Haqooq-i-Sindh March’ on its third day, he said he knew the culture, tradition, land, Ajrak, cap and the saints of Sindh due to his decades-long affiliation to Sindh.

“After a long time, I have been here in Larkana,” he said, and dipped in the past when he had, as the Punjab PPP president, been visiting Garhi Khuda Bakhsh Bhutto on April 4 every year. “Why I distanced myself from PPP?” he posed a question to answer it in detail.

He said Benazir Bhutto gave him respect and the presidentship of Punjab PPP. He referred to his last meeting with Ms Bhutto in Multan when she had asked him to make preparations for the Rawalpindi public meeting. “I did not know it was my last meeting and conversation with her,” he said.

“I stood by the PPP in all ups and downs; while remaining in PPP government, I had started feeling that the party is changing its direction,” he said, and regretted that “today, PPP has become the party of Zar and Zardari”.

Mr Qureshi touched the episode leading him to quit as the foreign minister and also as the MNA “after hearing the voice of my conscience over the issue of Raymond Davis”.

He referred to Asif Ali Zardari’s message in those times that “anyone who leaves PPP will become zero”, and argued: “But look, I am still an MNA and also the foreign minister despite leaving PPP”.

He also talked about the relations between Bhuttos and Bahauddin Zakriya. Had Benazir Bhutto been alive today, she would have told about such relationship, he said.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, he recalled, had been visiting his maternal uncle’s house in Multan and said that at the event of his [Qureshi’s] dastarbandi, Benazir Bhutto, against customs and traditions, kept sitting in the courtyard. He said Zardari had no that ‘eye’.

He pointed out that Moazzam Abbasi had won from Larkana during PPP’s rule. People of this area felt that Larkana did not belong to Zardari, he said.

He posed a question to the audience that “do you have courage to liberate Larkana from the clutches of Zar and Zardari?” He asked the youth to spread PTI’s manifesto of ‘change’ to cities, towns and villages.

Federal Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar also spoke at the public meeting.

The marchers also visited Qambar-Shahdadkot where another public meeting was held.

Published in Dawn, March 1st, 2022