MULTAN, Dec 29: Democracy cannot take root in the country without doing away with the meddling of intelligence agencies in the political affairs.

This was stated by former Sindh governor Syed Mamoon Hussain while talking to newsmen at the residence of PML-N acting president Makhdoom Javed Hashmi.

He said that secret agencies had their own agenda which often clashed with the democratic institutions and a tug-of-war resulted in premature packing of the elected government.

Criticizing the government formation in Sindh, he termed it a shameful drama staged to install a handpicked government in the country’s most sensitive province. Those who were earlier labelled as ‘raw agents’ were now rewarded with coveted government offices for the service they rendered to cobble governments in the centre and in the province, he said.

Commenting on Ishratul Ibad as the Sindh governor, he said he was at a loss to determine that whether a government could drop cases of criminal nature against an accused. “If the criminal cases against Mr Ibad were fabricated then why the government is not taking action against the officials who instituted them”, he asked.

Politicians who were aligning with the junta should learn a lesson from the fate of MQM (Haqiqi) which was installed by the agencies and was now being thrashed in the changed priorities of the establishment. “The downfall of Mian Muhammad Azhar is also an eye opener,” he added.

The former governor said the Muttahida’s choice of a person, who had been living in exile for the last 10 years, was also meaningful which would cast far-reaching impact on the politics of the province.

He said MQM misinterpreted the history while demanding implementation on the Pakistan Resolution regarding autonomy of the federating units. After an amendment the word provinces had replaced the word states in 1946. “Therefore, there is no question of Pakistan being consisted of states,” he asserted.