The anti-Pakistan Peoples Party alliance met at the Gohar Palace in Khangarh, Ghotki district, on Saturday, vowing to strengthen the group on the line of Larkana Ittehad, which defeated a PPP candidate in the 2018 general elections.
"Sindh's people are looking towards alternate leadership," argued Maulana Rashid Mehmood Soomro and Sardar Ali Gohar Khan Mahar at a press conference held after the meeting of the political leaders.
The whole province has been turned into ruins and the condition of Larkana reminds us of Mohenjo Daro, they maintained. Soomro said that the meeting has decided that all the opposition figures will together raise their voice for Sindh.
"Our alliance will provide the leadership which the people of Sindh have been looking for and we will help poor and downtrodden people get their rights."
Soomro disclosed that it has been decided in the meeting that this was an electoral alliance in which candidates will contest on tickets from their respective parties against PPP candidates in the next elections.
He acknowledged that his party Jamaat-e-Ulema-eIslam-Fazl (JUI-F) had formed a coalition with the PPP and he termed this a mistake.
"But now we are with the opposition parties." Responding to a question as to which political figures are joining their alliance, Soomro said they will show their cards at the right time.
Meanwhile, Mahar claimed that their league would not disappoint the people of Sindh. "We will fulfill the hopes of the province's people about governance and performance [after winning the elections." The alliance held its first meeting over a week ago in Larkana.
On the other hand, Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah dismissed the alliance, calling it an air bubble.
"The alliance will prove to be an air bubble which will burst in the next elections," he said while speaking to the media in Sehwan, Jamshoro district, on Saturday.
He contended that unlike the defeated figures in the coalition, the PPP had deep roots among the people that were planted by former prime ministers and PPP leaders Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto.
"These empty vessels have no strength to root out the Public-PPP relationship."
Emphasising the political significance of his party, he argued that when PPP parted ways with the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) the grouping lost its political strength and purpose.
Meanwhile, PPP Sindh president Nisar Ahmed Khuhro described the alliance as a bunch of retired politicians while speaking to the media in Larkana.
"We are confident that the PPP alone can defeat such a group." He said the PPP will emerge victorious in the next local government and general elections.
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