A day before the Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s rally on Friday in upper Sindh, it was at pains to stress that it is against the division of Sindh, so much so that it will table a resolution in the Sindh Assembly to this effect.
The MQM has pursued a constitutional amendment bill in the National Assembly, seeking the creation of new provinces in Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, attracting opposition from Sindh. The nationalists, who mainly derive their strength in Sindh’s heartland, have called this a move to divide Sindh.
The MQM’s Dr Farooq Sattar briefed the media at the Sukkur railway station ground on Thursday evening, stressing that they had no such designs. “We were against the division of Sindh yesterday, we are against the division of Sindh today and we will be always against the division of Sindh in the future.”
Sattar said he was optimistic that they would attract huge crowds not only from Sukkur and its allied areas, but from other districts as well.
In the most general of terms, Sattar said today Pakistan is facing many challenges internally and externally but that its prosperity and development was next to impossible without the prosperity and development of Sindh. Indeed, Karachi has long been seen as the financial powerhouse of the country.
It was the Sindh Assembly that adopted a unanimous resolution in favour of the creation of Pakistan, said Sattar, taking a note from history. “If Sindh is denied autonomy and prosperity, Pakistan will not be able to achieve prosperity.”
He went on to stress that party chief Altaf Hussain was a “son of the soil” and he and the party were committed to their “motherland”. In fact, the MQM will table a resolution in the Sindh Assembly negating the division of Sindh and this resolution will prove the last nail in the coffin of conspirators, he said.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 27th, 2012.
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