HYDERABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) vice chairman Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Friday addressed participants of his party’s ‘Haqooq-i-Sindh’ march in Tando Mohammad Khan and Tando Allahyar before leaving for Hyderabad in the evening. Sindh PTI president Syed Ali Zaidi and several other provincial leaders of the party also spoke.

Mr Qureshi, who is also the foreign minister, strongly criticised PTI opponents for “creating uncertainty” in the country by resorting to move a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Imran Khan, saying that their aim was to cause frustration and make the masses worried about their future.

“They are doing all this for the sake of powers, rather to escape accountability,” he remarked, and described Pakistan Peoples Party’s Karachi-Islamabad long march as a drama.

The top PPP leaders initially believed that multitudes of people would welcome them when they would kick start the long march from Sindh but they saw that while the PPP march was still in Sindh, the PTI march started taking shape, he said.

Until recently, he said, the people of Sindh were being shown only one side of picture but now they were hearing PTI’s narrative as well and that’s why PPP decided to leave Sindh early to enter Punjab. “I would only offer my sympathy to PPP for what has happened to their march in Multan, my home district, where [PPP chairman] Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari had to address an empty ground and, therefore, move the venue to the Bypass Chowk to block it,” he said.

Mr Qureshi told the audience that people of Sindh had been watching the “PPP movie” for 15 years … they were now fed up with it and did not want to watch it any longer … PPP did not have a new vigour, manifesto or philosophy, therefore, this movie had become irrelevant, he observed.

The senior PTI leader said PPP had already been rejected in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and recently it was rejected by Azad Jammu & Kashmir as well.

He remarked that people of Sindh had tested PPP five times in lieu of the struggle made and sacrifices rendered by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto. “Those who are tired of ‘Zardari Raj’ are going to take a different decision in the 2023 general elections,” he said, adding that this decision would get them their rights and a dignified and prosperous Pakistan. He said an honest leadership was needed for this purpose because looters could not build a new Pakistan.

Mr Qureshi said that if people of Sindh voted PTI to power, a prosperous Sindh would also emerge.

Sindh PTI president Syed Ali Zaidi said this province faced destruction in PPP’s 15 years of rule over it. Referring to Sindh PTI’s performance in the 2013 elections, he said its candidates bagged a huge number of votes and its female voters had filled polling stations despite the fact that the party’s organisational body was weaker at that time. He expressed his confidence that PTI would win many more Sindh Assembly seats in the next general elections and form its government.

Mr Zaidi said the country’s looted wealth would be recovered and spent on improvement of health and other vital sectors.

Published in Dawn, March 5th, 2022