PPP trying to occupy Karachi: Kamal

The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) is trying to occupy Karachi, claimed Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) chairperson Mustafa Kamal on Friday, warning the ruling party that if it did so, the people would take the Sindh government away from it as well.

Addressing a protest amid heavy rain a day after the Sindh cabinet approved the creation of a seventh district in the city, Kamal said neither the ‘Sindh card’ nor the ‘Muhajir card’ would work anymore.

“We will never allow our motherland, Sindh, to be divided and nor will we let anyone rip its heart, Karachi,” he stated. “The PPP is fanning ethnic hatred in the province, but we will thwart every conspiracy hatched by it or the Muttahida Qaumi Movement to create rifts between Sindhis and Muhajirs for their own political gains.”

Kamal claimed that the PPP-led provincial government always made decisions on ethnic grounds, pointing to changes in National Assembly seats in the city following the census.

Lambasting the MQM, Kamal said it had begun raising slogans for a separate province though it “could not even control a sewerage line,” adding that this was what the PPP needed to boost its “hate-based” politics.

“When voices calling for breaking Sindh are heard from Karachi, PPP tells our Sindhi brothers that the motherland has to be saved and so they should overlook their children who died of corruption, incompetence, dog bites and starvation,” he claimed.

“The city is being divided at a time when [even] the Chief Justice of Pakistan says the provincial and city governments have failed to deliver,” he stated. “The PPP is fanning ethnic hatred because it knows it does not live in the people’s hearts, but Karachi’s citizens will not let it bifurcate the city.”

Published in The Express Tribune, August 22^nd, 2020.