ISLAMABAD, June 12: Altaf Hussain, the chief of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, has blamed feudal lords and army generals for the country's backwardness and said that Pakistan can make progress and become a prosperous nation only if power is handed over to the poor people who constitute 98 per cent of the population.

In a telephone address to the party's Punjab organisational convention held here on Sunday night, he regretted that India which achieved independence one day after Pakistan was ahead of the latter in science and technology, education, health and agriculture.

He said the feudal elements and generals started destabilising the country immediately after it had came into being. They were involved in what he called the "murder" of the father of the nation, Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and also in the break-up of the country in 1971.

Mr Hussain said that the Quaid had been poisoned and the authorities had arranged for him a defective ambulance, without oxygen and petrol. The ambulance broke down and there was no-one to help the Quaid.

The MQM chief said that Pakistan would never prosper if the same combination of feudal lords and generals continued to run the affairs of the country. He said the government must be run by representatives of the poor and middle classes.

Every citizen of Pakistan, not just the two exploiting classes, should be involved in policy-making. Speaking on the occasion, the parliamentary leader of the MQM, Dr Farooq Sattar, said that four groups, feudal lords, civilian bureaucracy, military bureaucracy and the self- proclaimed righteous Mullahs, were behind the backwardness of Pakistan and the suffering of its people.

They did not like people of the lower class to participate in governance, he added. Other speakers said that the MQM leadership was trying to change the system of governance in the country by striving to promote a process of participatory policy-making and bringing about institutional reforms.