The ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) appeared to be the only party to laud MQM’s decision. PHOTO: MQM/FILE
The ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) appeared to be the only party to laud MQM’s decision; all others unanimously believed its earlier support for Minhajul Quran International’s (MQI) march was nothing more than a ‘gimmick’ to place pressure on the ruling party to fulfil some of its demands.
“I deem it blackmailing,” said Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) General Secretary Mushahidullah Khan while talking to The Express Tribune.
“MQM has a history of backtracking… the announcement to participate in Qadri’s march was simply a stunt to get the PPP to meet their demands,” he added. Mushahid termed it unfortunate that the ruling party allowed itself to be held ‘hostage’ at the MQM’s hands.
Soon after the MQM Deputy Convener Farooq Sattar’s conference, Interior Minister Rehman Malik thanked MQM for pulling out of the long march. Terming the MQM’s decision ‘wise’, he advised Qadri to simply cancel the march as well.
Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira, too, hoped the MQI chief would pay heed to PPP and MQM’s advice.
“Everybody has the right to protest and assemble‚ however‚ nobody would be allowed to disrupt public life. It is the responsibility of the government to protect the lives and property of the citizens,” he maintained.
Other critics of MQM’s announcement made the same observations as PML-N and ANP. They observed the party had adopted such a strategy several times in the past, adding that it could have used the threat of joining the march to obtain certain guarantees and concessions regarding issues such as the delimitation of constituencies and voter verification in Karachi, the Sindh local bodies system and the dual nationality bill.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 12th, 2013.
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Majority of these comments against MQM are normally made by racists people of Pakistan, especially Punjabis and Pathans. They never beleive in equal rights and they alway support Feudal system. They live in different states yet they get their jobs in Karachi. they come and they kill innocent Urdu speaking people and talk bad about them. It is about time to shut them up and send them back to where they came from along with racially motivated views
But doing these stunts MQM has created an everlasting bad impression to all the patriot mohajirs. This party has simply lost the objective and now being controlled by hypocrites, power hungry mafia controlled from london. They do the politics at the blood of karachites.
Hippocracy thi name is MQM
What the dual-faced,double-standard and hypocritical policies of MQM!And this proves that MQM may deceive any one any time by showing false,fabricated and embellished sympathies and loyalties with any one and most especially importantly MQM has proven it that MQM is an opportunist political party and can take full advantage easily and hypocritically of any situation in Pakistan doesn't matter how many times lies are told and hypocrisy is shown....