Public rally: PPP puts up massive show of support for LG law

HYDERABAD:

The city that had danced in Hyderabad’s streets over an electoral victory in 2008 for Benazir Bhutto’s party was strangely quiet over the weekend in the lead up to a rally. But come Monday, at least 60,000 people converged at the interchange near the city’s Qasimabad neighbourhood on the Pakistan Peoples Party’s invitation. The PPP wanted to put up a show of strength for its new local government law that has been a PR disaster with the nationalists.

The support for the new Sindh Peoples Local Government Ordinance 2012 came from people from all over Sindh who flocked to Hyderabad. The boisterous crowd danced to political songs and eagerly responded to the slogans about the Bhuttos. Their presence sent a message to the nationalists and Pakistan Muslim League (Functional) who had declared in a vehement campaign against the PPP that anyone who attended the meeting would be a traitor of Sindh. The security threats, even expressed by the inspector general of police, had little if any effect on the crowd which even trampled barbed wires and deluged the spot under the stage.

Former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, federal ministers Qamaruz Zaman Kaira, Amin Fahim and Moula Bux Chandio, Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah, Sindh Assembly speaker Nisar Khuhro and ministers as well as PPP senators, MNAs and MPAs addressed the meeting.

As the speeches were made, the leaders appeared united in defence of the new local government system and in condemnation of the Sindhi nationalists and their alleged sponsor, the PML-N.

“Nawaz Sharif visited all the four corners of Sindh but failed to attract people,” said Qaim Ali Shah. “He then bought these people who first formed a Mohabbat-i-Sindh organisation and went on a long march to Islamabad without even clearly knowing what they wanted for Sindh.”

Shah lampooned Awami Tehreek’s Ayaz Palijo for what he said was making the women of Sindh dance all the way to Islamabad. “As soon as he stepped out of the train he rejected the ordinance without even bothering to read it.”

The meeting also passed resolutions to approve of the new local government system which it said was in the interest of Sindh. The PPP’s leaders from Punjab kept to a reconciliatory tone as the Sindh leadership raked the opponents of the new LG system over the coals.

Federal minister Moula Bux Chandio, who belongs to Hyderabad, said the nationalists are dreaming of winning seats in the next general elections by capitalising on the hate vote against the PPP. “Today the irony is that the JUI, Sunni Tehreek, ANP, PML-F and even PML-N are acting as Sindhi nationalists,” he said. “But, the PPP leaders and workers who languished in jails, were killed and exiled are portrayed as enemies of Sindh.”  Sindh information minister Sharjeel Memon declared that the credentials of the nationalists were extortion and dacoities.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 16^th, 2012.