KARACHI: The opposition Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) on Monday questioned the political activism of Sindh Governor Kamran Tessori and said that it had approached President Dr Arif Alvi to take notice of his “misconduct”.

PTI’s parliamentary party leader in the Sindh Assembly Khurram Sher Zaman told a press conference at the party’s media cell said that he, representing the legislators of key opposition parties, had written a letter to President Alvi and appealed to take notice of the “political activism” of representative of the federation in the province.

“I wonder how he [Tessori] is behaving after becoming the governor,” he said, adding: “Doesn’t he have the respect for his office? How can he so openly violate the mandate and constitutional requirement of his office?”

He went on to say: “It’s not his job to merge the factions of a certain political party and call it an effort to unite the political leadership of urban Sindh. It’s ridiculous. This is setting an anti-constitutional precedent.”

Says it’s not governor’s job to seek merger of political parties

He alleged that the Sindh governor was “abusing his position” and carrying out partisan politics.

Accompanied by party MNA Mahmood Moulvi and MPAs Shahzad Qureshi and Sidra Imran, Mr Sher Zaman also expressed disappointment over the conduct of “so-called democratic parties” which weren’t bothered with the governor’s violation of code of conduct.

“The governor of a province represents the president and the federation and so, the office of the governor should be non-partisan and must avoid doing politics on behalf of any political party. Since becoming appointed governor of Sindh on Oct 10, Mr Tessori has engaged himself in partisan politics on behalf of the MQM, as if he is the party’s head,” the PTI leader read out a portion of his letter to the president.

Concern over move to delay LG polls

The PTI leaders expressed their concerns over another “deliberate move” to delay the January 15 local government elections saying the parties in the ruling coalition at the Centre were conspiring again to deprive the people of Karachi of their basic democratic right.

“They [parties in the Centre coalition] never want to hold elections and it has become clear to every single Karachiite,” he said. “And the reasons of that mindset are very clear. They know that they would witness the devastating defeat in any kind of electoral process.”

Secondly, he said, these parties did not want to devolve powers to local governments under one pretext or another. They know the local government would bring an end to Sindh government’s exploitation.

“I appeal to the chief justice of Pakistan to please take notice of this and make sure that the local government elections in Karachi are held on January 15.”

Published in Dawn, January 3th, 2023