Switching loyalties: PPP activists rally against Qureshi

Karachi division leaders discredit former PPP leader, accuse him of incompetence.

KARACHI: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) activists settled outside the People’s Secretariat in a protest against former PPP leader Shah Mehmood Qureshi. Qureshi has abandoned the party and is poised to join the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf.

The activists held up portraits of Benazir Bhutto, President Asif Ali Zardari and Zulfikar Bhutto and shouted their anger with Qureshi, “a leader of lota politics”.

PPP Karachi Division President Najmi Alam and General Secretary Saeed Ghani were among the leaders who addressed the rally that caused a massive traffic jam near the Gurumandir area. Earlier, PPP leaders held a press conference and said that Qureshi was playing into the hands of the people who had been opposing the division of Punjab.

Alam wondered out loud why Qureshi had not uttered a single word against the PPP leadership while he was a foreign minister. “He has begun lobbying against the PPP and was fired due to poor performance,” he alleged. Qureshi attempted to get back into the foreign ministry many times but failed because the party felt that he was incompetent and hence unsuitable for the post, he added.

Alam said that even though the PPP had appointed him Punjab president and given him the foreign ministry, but he left the party because he (Qureshi) was not true follower of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto.

“How can anybody expect good things from a man who had joined hands with former dictator general, Ziaul Haq?” he asked.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 16^th,  2011.