PSP loyalists will soon return to MQM fold: Sattar

MQM leader says party members switched sides ‘under duress’

KARACHI: Former MQM lawmaker Asif Hasnain and others, who switched political loyalties to Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP), will soon return to the party fold, Muttahida Qaumi Movement – Pakistan’s (MQM-Pakistan) head Dr Farooq Sattar said on Saturday.

Addressing a women’s general workers convention in Orangi Town, Sattar maintained that Hasnain, and others had switched to PSP “under duress” and they would “rejoin” the party after the “parade”.

Hasnain accompanied Dr Sattar during the August 23 news conference.

The former MQM lawmaker quit the party to join the new entity led by former Karachi mayor Mustafa Kamal PSP five days after Sattar and others disowned their chief, Altaf Hussain, and the entire London-based party leadership.

Dispelling the impression that MQM would split into many other factions, he said: “MQM was and will remain a unified party.” He maintained that MQM-Pakistan was the “real MQM”.

Referring to the first show of power MQM-Pakistan intended to stage on December 25 outside the Mazar-e-Quaid, Sattar claimed that the gathering would “break all previous records held by any other party on the venue”.

In an apparent attempt to encourage MQM workers, he expressed the hope that the party would not only hold on to its mandate it had gained in elections, but improve upon it. “In the 2013 elections, we won 18 National Assembly seats. In 2018, we will secure 19 not 16 or 17.”

Criticising Pakistan Peoples Party-led (PPP) government in Sindh, he reiterated that his party would publish a ‘white paper’, detailing widespread corruption in the province.

Stressing the need for across-the-board accountability, he said that everyone in the province should be held accountable and not just any particular person or family.

Khawaja Izharul Hasan, Heer Soho also spoke on the occasion.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 6^th, 2016.