KARACHI: Jamaat-i-Islami chief Sirajul Haque on Monday warned Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah directly of a strong reaction if the Pakistan Peoples Party tried to bring its own mayor of Karachi by resorting to illegal tactics.
His criticism came a day after CM Shah declared that his party was the single largest party and despite ‘hue and cry’ of others a PPP candidate would become the next mayor of Karachi.
Speaking at a press conference at the party headquarters Idara Noor-i-Haq, the JI chief sounded confident that his party would assume the top office of the city’s municipal administration system if mayoral election were held in a free and fair manner.
He accused the PPP-led Sindh government and its leadership of repeating the “history of 1970 general elections” where they denied the rule to the majority party that led to the ‘Fall of Dhaka’ and East Pakistan became Bangladesh.
The JI chief also questioned the role of the Election Commission of Pakistan which he said had ‘failed’ to issue schedule for polling in the 11 remaining union committees of Karachi to complete the process of Jan 15 elections.
“Mr chief minister, it could be your wishful thinking to install a jiyala mayor in Karachi,” he said. “You have made all moves. You used government machinery...you used returning officers and you made all legal and illegal attempts for [making a] PPP mayor, but this depends only on the people of Karachi who chose JI, making it single largest party in terms of voters’ mandate.”
He vowed that the JI would form the local government in Karachi as his party had already won election on 358 wards, which is a much higher number compared to the PPP’s which won less than 300 wards.
He said that despite lacking majority the PPP kept on insisting on grabbing the mayor’s office and this only reflected its “feudal mindset”.
“We had witnessed the same mindset in 1970 when the PPP denied powers to those who won majority in the election which then led to tbe irreparable loss to the nation and East Pakistan became Bangladesh,” said Mr Haque.
He said that the ECP was going to conduct the hearing of a case pertaining to the Karachi local government polls on March 14 (today). He asked the constitutional body to decide the cases on merit by rejecting all pressures.
The JI chief said elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab would be a useless exercise and it was time to call general elections at the same time across the country after electoral reforms.
“The Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) and the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf have locked horns over their personal and political reasons and not over national interests. The nation needs to get rid of the PTI, PPP and PDM. We [JI] are the only political alternative in the political arena to handle the ongoing crises,” he said.
Published in Dawn, March 14th, 2023
