No apologies for accidents in rally: ANP

Shahi Syed: we held it at Sea View so the rest of the city was not disturbed.

KARACHI: Accusations that Awami National Party workers were involved in accidents on Sunday are just an attempt to malign the party, said Shahi Syed at a press conference on Tuesday.

Over the weekend thousands of the Pakhtoon-backed party’s supporters and members flooded Sea View for a rally to celebrate the renaming of the NWFP as Khyber- Pakhtunkhwa. There were at least three reports of accidents after the rally in which two ANP workers were killed. One accident took place in Baldia Town when a motorcyclist fell after his vehicle slipped.

Enraged party supporters blocked parts of Baldia near Mawach Goth. In a second incident, one party supporter was injured in North Nazimabad. However, the ANP’s Sindh chief Shahi Syed said that the incidents were not the result of any violence on their part. They were peaceful and the workers were being blamed for no reason, he said, adding that the administration of the cantonment board and DHA should not have turned the lights off when their gathering was in place. “We did not use government machinery,” he added.

“We arranged the rally at the seaside so that people in the rest of the city would not be disturbed.” Nonetheless the city was disturbed in parts on Sunday as thousands of ANP supporters, in buses, on motorcycles, in cars and in vans thronged the streets. Many of them were driving extremely fast and others were causing traffic jams by stopping buses at tight spots.

There was a report of a terrible accident on the road from the DHA Sunday bazaar. At 5:15 pm three young people in a car were hit at full speed by a jeep believed to be carrying ANP supporters. The 23-year-old woman sitting in the back was hit the worst. She died a few minutes after reaching hospital though attempts were made to revive her.

Her 25-year-old brother was injured and their cousin is in critical condition. The jeep sped off after hitting them. Politics Shahi Syed said that the coalition partners in the Sindh government was not giving the ANP its rights and were neglecting it on many important matters. “We have only one minister, who holds the portfolio of the Labour Ministry,” he said.

“He is not taken into confidence when appointments and transfers are made.” Shahi Syed held the chief minister responsible for “this mismanagement.” While referring to protests held by people from Hazara over the renaming of the NWFP, Shahi Syed said that the ANP wanted politics of reconciliation and would work for the maintenance of peace in the city. “Hazarewals are our brothers and we will hold talks to take them into confidence,” he said.

He paid tribute to the party workers who were killed on May 12, 2007, saying that it was because of them that democracy prevailed across the country. He demanded the chief justice take suo motu action into the violence that took place that day when political parties went to welcome him at the Karachi airport.

On another note, Shahi Syed condemnd the two major coalition partners in the Sindh government – the PPP and MQM – saying that they were wasting their time and fooling people by holding hour-long corecommittee meetings on the local government legislation. “If they do not agree on the local government system, why are they punishing the people of the province for that?”