‘Ignored’ party sulks over PPP-MQM LG talks

KARACHI: The local bodies system of 2001 is perfect, said the president of the Pakistan Muslim League-Function (PML-F), Sadaruddin Shah Rashdi, arguging that no structural changes in the system will be accepted.

Rashdi was talking to journalists at his residence in Gizri on Wednesday on the occasion of Anwar Halepota, former district nazim of Badin, joining the PML-F. The only beneficiaries of the new proposed system will be the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), he said. “We formed local governments in six districts in the previous term, while the MQM could only form theirs in two cities,” he said.“We will fight to death any changes in the system.” Rashdi said that the PML-F has informed the president, Asif Ali Zardari, about their stance on the LG system.

The reconciliation process was accepted by the PML-F in the interests of the public, he said, but the government seems bent upon going against the process. Why is the government’s reconciliation with the PML-F not following the same path as the reconciliation with the MQM, asked Rashdi. A large number of cases were filed against the PML-F in 2008 and the whole point of reconciliation was to get rid of political vendetta, which had translated into FIRs on many accounts, said the PML-F president. Rashdi added that he has requested the president to form a committee that can differentiate between actual criminal cases and those with political bias. “There will be a meeting on this issue very soon,” he said.

Opposition leader in the Sindh Assembly Jam Madad Ali, Adviser to Chief Minister Imtiaz Sheikh, Retired Brigadier Harris and Nawab Rashid were also present on the occasion.

Published in the Express Tribune, May 20th, 2010.