PML-N confident of electoral victory in Sindh

Party's alliance with MQM-P and GDA considered strong in the province

HYDERABAD:

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) believes that a stronger and functional alliance among the anti-PPP parties in Sindh will snatch electoral victories from the PPP which ruled the province for 15 consecutive years.

Speaking at a press conference at Hyderabad Press Club and the workers convention on Friday, PML-N Sindh's president Bashir Memon said, an analytical review of the voting statistics of last three elections showed that the PPP could secure around 38 per cent of the polled votes.

He said, the results of the upcoming general elections in Sindh will be different because his party in cooperation with Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) and Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA) will give a tough time to the PPP.

Commenting on the prospects of teaming up with the MQM-P, keeping in view the past differences between the two parties, he expressed hope that the two parties together will make each other stronger.

Memon, former Director General Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) who is being blamed by the PPP for using his bureaucratic influence to enlist politicians in the province, said the PPP claimed of having spent Rs20,000 billion in last 15 years.

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"Yet it is hard to find even a single development project which is praiseworthy except the government hospital in Gambat [Khairpur] and [the satellite branches of] National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases."

He alleged that all those funds were eaten up by corrupt people. "The PPP should show us the expenditure of at least Rs10,000 billion."

Memon contended that the urban and rural development which could have been attained by spending thousands of billions of rupees is not even evident in the province's metropolis - Karachi. "The people don't even receive clean drinking water."  "We have heard about ghost houses but in Sindh ghost schools also exist," the N-league's Nehal Hashmi mentioned. He argued that the PPP is playing with emotions of the province's people by frightening them with the rollback of the 18th amendment and provincial autonomy.

Hashmi said, if PML-N's leader Nawaz Sharif had any objection over the 18th amendment, the legislation would never have sailed through the assembly in 2008. "The theatrics of using the Sindh card should end now." He believed that Sindh's people are not only victims of PPP's alleged corruption but they knew that the funds meant for their prosperity and development were blatantly embezzled.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 16^th, 2023.