HYDERABAD, Oct 20: The Sindh Democratic Forum (SDF) on Saturday blamed ‘policies of successive military dictatorships combined with total failure of governance’ for the suicide blasts in Pakistan People’s Party’s welcome rally in Karachi on Thursday.

In a statement mailed to Dawn the forum leaders said that the incident also indicated that the country was now reaping during the eight fruitless years of Gen Musharraf’s rule what Gen Zia had sown in Afghanistan during his 11 long and dark years.

Under these military governments Pakistan’s civil and military establishment had done everything possible to weaken the progressive and liberal forces and encourage religious and ethnic extremism, they said adding that when the progressive majority welcomed a political party the establishment reacted by unleashing the extremist minority.

They said that the blasts prematurely ended the procession in which people from all the four provinces of Pakistan, Kashmir and the northern, tribal and Fata areas had participated.

The people dancing on the streets of Karachi in a festive mood were sending a message that people of Pakistan were united against religious, ethnic, sectarian and gender divide and that they were progressive, democratic and peace loving and opposed to military rule, they said.

They reminded Benazir Bhutto that her desire for integrating the society was welcome but she should also keep in mind that Sindh was faced with a dangerous and ugly extremism of ethnicity in the shape of Muttahida Qaumi Movement.

They said that the urban terrorism posed a lurking danger to the political and geographic integrity of the province. So while quoting the terror unleashed by Al-Badr and Al-Shams she must not forget the terror of May 12th, they stressed.

They reminded her that she had made commitments at her Dubai press conference and on her arrival that she would bring tolerance, peace and democratic norms to the country’s politics and provide jobs, “Roti, Kapra aur Makan”.

But without a clear programme and vision the promises would remain just a political rhetoric. The party should, therefore, make public its programme for the masses to give a measure of confidence to such declarations, they said.

They suggested that the ground realities in Pakistan and especially in Sindh were far removed from the times she had left nine years ago and her two stints in power.

At present the biggest irritant in relations between federating units was the issue of political sovereignty and fiscal autonomy and until and unless these issues were confronted head-on and settled, the unity and integration of federation would remain a dream.