SUKKUR: Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl information secretary Hafiz Hussain Ahmed has said that the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) were the parties that had supported the 21st constitutional amendment and the National Action Plan and the two parties are now raising a hue and cry over the implementation of the law and the NAP.

Speaking at a press conference at the residence of Jacobabad district president of the JUI-F Dr A.G. Ansari on Monday, Hafiz Ahmed said his party did not support the law and the plan in the past and still opposed it because it did not agree that seminaries were producing extremists or terrorists.

He criticised the PPP leadership for staying away in Dubai at a time when their party’s support base, Sindh, was gripped by serious problems. “Dubai, which is famous for hosting international cricket, is now hosting political events where Sindh’s rights are bargained,” he remarked.

Expressing his dismay over the Sindh government’s failure to arrest the assassins of JUI-F Sindh secretary general Dr Khalid Mehmood Soomro and their facilitators, Hafiz Ahmed asked: “Where are the military courts which were supposed to punish terrorists?” He observed that while the implementation of the NAP was in full swing assassins of Dr Soomro were out of the range of the law enforcement agencies.

The JUI-F leader also hit out at a big section of the media for not giving adequate coverage to the party’s mammoth gathering in Larkana on Sunday, and regretted that it [the media] thoroughly covered a gathering of a few thousand people in Karachi.

“The media is controlled using zar aur zor (money and pressure) but we don’t subscribe to such ideas,” he said.

Hafiz Ahmed said that his party was struggling against a system based on ‘might is right’ which was also functioning in Sindh.

Dr A.G. Ansari, Hamad­ullah Ansari and other party leaders were also present.

Published in Dawn, December 1st, 2015