Internal dissent: Pro-Mirza PPP MPAs snub CM’s summons

Party members asked to explain why they were meeting Mirza, publicly supporting him.

KARACHI:

If Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah wasn’t already angry, a dozen of his party members ensured that he was by Wednesday when they refused his summons. They were asked to explain why they have been meeting Zulfiqar Mirza.

Lashings of criticism from the fire-breathing Mirza have been directed at the Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) newly reinstated coalition partner, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM). The PPP distanced itself from Mirza’s statements but when its very own MPAs spent three days with him, matters came to a head. The party’s chief, President Asif Zardari, asked Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah, who runs the party in Sindh, to haul them up.

But then, the dissent cracked wide open when the MPAs refused to go to CM House to meet Shah. “[Zulfiqar Mirza] is our best friend and party leader,” said Javed Shah, one of the PPP MPAs who was served notice. The others included Imdad Pitafi, Nasrullah Baloch, Fayaz Butt, Aisha Khoso, Imran Zaffar Leghari.

The defiant MPAs said that they would discuss the matter at the party’s parliamentary meeting on Friday. Mukesh Kumar Chawla, Sharjeel Inam Memon and Aisha Khoso did, however, go see the CM.

Qaim Ali Shah would have asked these party members why they met Mirza on several occasions since he returned from abroad this week and why they publicly supported him. There were gatherings with him at the residences of Baloch, Chawla and even PPP federal minister Khurshid Shah. Pitafi, Shah, Baloch, Butt and Leghari, who accompanied Mirza to Pir Pagara’s residence on Monday, said that they did not regret meeting him. Mirza is no longer an MPA as he resigned in August.

The MPAs were told that unless they explained themselves in a few days, the party would take action against them. Zulfiqar Mirza has been traditionally known as one of the men close to Zardari, but this may have changed with these recent developments.

One of the reasons that the PPP leadership is unhappy with Mirza is that he has been opposing the local government system and the MQM’s stance on it. But the PPP has to come to some sort of agreement with the MQM at some point on this legislation.

Sources said that during a meeting, the CM briefed PPP leaders about the 2001 local government system and said that they would start negotiating with their coalition partners, especially the MQM, on the lawmaking. A bill may very well be making its way to the Sindh Assembly, which is due to be in session soon.

Mirza becomes a thorn in the PPP and MQM’s side because he claims he has garnered the support of some dissenting PPP MPAs who will oppose this legislation if it bows to MQM demands. “We clarified our position during the meeting with the CM that we cannot accept SLGO 2001 and will vote against it,” Aisha Khoso told The Express Tribune after she answered her summons.

She felt that the 2001 system of running Sindh’s cities has not worked for people at the grass roots level. “How can we accept a system which has encouraged corruption rather than fix problems,” she asked.

For his part, PPP MPA Imran Zafar Leghari argued that they could not accept a system that was introduced by a “former dictator and his cronies”. He was referring to Pervez Musharraf’s 2001 system. But then, the PPP MPAs who prefer the 1979 system are criticised on this point as that too was introduced by a military dictator, General Zia-ul Haq.

For now, though PPP parliamentary leader in Sindh Pir Mazhar-ul Haq has called a parliamentary meeting of the party on October 14 (Friday) in order to brief the party’s MPAs about their policy on the local government system and other issues.

Sources said that the CM also met PPP leaders from Lyari. Rafique Engineer and Saleem Hingoro attended the meeting in which the CM talked about the government’s decision to ban the Peoples Amn Committee, which Mirza backs. The PAC said on Wednesday that it would challenge the ban and that Mirza had advised them to also rename themselves.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 13^th, 2011.