MQM-P warns of quitting PDM govt at Centre

Says coalition partner PPP failed to honour agreements


Z Ali January 11, 2023

HYDRABAD:

Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) Deputy Convener Waseem Akhtar has warned of quitting Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif led coalition government if Pakistan Peoples Party failed to honour the agreement with MQM-P.

"The PPP was able to get 10 ministries in the centre thanks to the seven votes of MQM-P, and Sharif became PM with the same votes," he recalled while addressing a protest rally against the delimitation of the local government constituencies outside Hyderabad press club on Tuesday.

"If [Asif Ali] Zardari doesn't fulfil his promise, we will take the matter to the rabita committee. And then it may happen that the way we sent Imran Khan's government packing, we do the same with the Sharif government." He reiterated that the supreme court had ordered the government to make the local government system strong by empowering the institutions. However, the PPP's Sindh government has not even implemented that order, he alleged.

He said the MQM-P spent three and a half years with the PTI government, but Khan did not resolve even a single problem raised by his party. Akhtar also blamed the PTI for stealing 14 seats of his party from Karachi. Similarly, he said MQM-P joined PML-N and PPP led government on certain conditions.

"For the last six months these parties have been keeping us with them on fake hopes as meeting after meeting is yielding no result," Akhtar said. PML-N and PPP not only signed an agreement with MQM-P but also took guarantees for each other.

He recalled that during a meeting with the PPP leaders, Zardari expressed the wish for a good working relation between PPP and MQM-P even after his death. According to him, PPP's chairman and foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari was present in that meeting. "But sadly, they betrayed us."

Published in The Express Tribune, January 11th, 2023.

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