Stabilising Pakistan: MQM hopes to provide third option in Punjab

Workers in K-P, Sindh will not attend the Sunday meeting: Dr Farooq Sattar

LAHORE:

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) will provide a third option to the people of the Punjab in the next general election, said MQM deputy convener Dr Farooq Sattar on Friday.

He said that after the overwhelming response the party had received during its mobilisation campaign for the April 10 public meeting at Gaddafi Stadium , he was certain that the people of the province were considering MQM as a third option, besides the Pakistan Peoples Party and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz.

He was addressing a press conference at the Gaddaf Stadium in connection with the Sunday event.

He said that the MQM had stopped its workers in Khyber Pakhtonkhwa and Sindh from attending the meeting because it wanted it to be an all-Punjab affair.

He said that they had been preparing for the meeting for several months. He said the gathering would be the first step in MQM’s struggle to bring about a revolution in the country. He hoped that the Gaddafi Stadium complex and the portion of Ferozepur Road next to it would be packed with people on Sunday.

Sattar said the party would eradicate feudalism by carrying out land reforms. He said it would give loans to small industries, construct houses for the poor through public-private partnership and adopt measures to improve literacy rate.

He said the Stabilising Pakistan meeting would provide the Punjab’s impoverished class an opportunity to unite under MQM’s platform and press for their rights. He said Altaf Hussain’s mission was to empower the people at the grassroots.

He said the MQM having 25 seats in the National Assembly and six in Senate had been blocking policy decisions that risked to raise the level of inflation. He said the party had opposed the imposition of the Reformed General Sales Tax (RGST) and unreasonable increases in the prices of petroleum products.

He said the MQM had transformed Karachi and Hyderabad and that the April 10 meeting would be the first step in implementing similar policies in the Punjab. “I hope the people of Punjab and MQM will not disappoint each other,” Sattar said. The feudal system, he said, was responsible for extremism and terrorism going on in the province, he said.

Sattar said the MQM delegation had been trying to meet Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif to invite him to the meeting. Besides the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid, he said the MQM had already invited the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf to the event. He said they also planned to meet Governor Sardar Latif Khan Khosa and PPP’s general secretary Jahangir Badr to invite the PPP Punjab leadership to the meeting.

He said that the provincial government had been cooperating with the MQM workers and that it had assured them of fool-proof security arrangements on Sunday.

Responding to a question about former Sindh home minister Zulfiqar Mirza, Sattar said that MQM had requested the PPP six times to remove Mirza from the office. He said that Mirza needed to consult his party leaders before giving statements against the MQM.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 9^th, 2011.