PESHAWAR, Feb 24: National Party (NP) president Dr Abdul Hai Baloch said on Saturday that government had lost its writ in Balochistan and urged opposition parties to prepare a joint strategy to pull the country out of crises.

The writ of the state does not exist in Balochistan. Extremist forces nurtured by the Establishment have deeply penetrated into society, Dr Hai said, while talking to journalists at the Peshawar Press Club.

He said the prolong dictatorship had ruined state institutions, destroyed political culture and undermined the country’s image abroad. He said the country stood isolated today because of flaws in the foreign policy.

Time is running out and the people of the country need full sovereignty, he said, adding that only a joint opposition could control the political turmoil prevailing in the province.

He said the government should allow the exiled leadership of the country’s two major political parties to return and hold free and fair elections.

Expressing concern over the prevailing situation in Balochistan, Dr Hai said that on the one hand the Baloch population had been deprived of its economic resources, on the other the army had launched an operation against the Baloch people since 2005.

He said the Balochs were being victimised since the partition and the first military operation against them was conducted as early as 1948. He said that ill-planned policies of rulers were causing a sense of deprivation among the people of Balochistan.

He said the government was constructing cantonments, allotting land to outsiders and establishing monopoly of multinational companies in the province instead of focusing its attention on human development which was vital for economic development of any region.

Criticising the handover of the operational control of the Gwadar port to the Singapore Port Authority, Dr Hai said the government did not take the Balochistan Assembly and nationalist parties into confidence over the matter.

This is colonisation in the name of development and a majority was being turned into a minority, he said, adding that the people of Balochistan needed economic autonomy and rights over their natural resources.

He said 80 per cent population of the province was without natural gas despite the fact that the province was the leading producer of natural gas in the country.