MQM clarifies Altaf's call to stay indoors was directed towards Islamabad residents

Panic spread throughout Karachi after Altaf urged public to remain indoors today fearing bloodshed in country


Rabia Ali August 26, 2014

KARACHI: A Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) leader told The Express Tribune on Tuesday that the party chief Altaf Hussain's statement urging people to remain indoors was directed towards residents of Islamabad.

Altaf had asked the public to remain indoors on Tuesday after 12 pm as he feared bloodshed would break out amongst protesters and the government. The MQM leader clarified, on the condition of anonymity, that Altaf's warning was particularly for those in Islamabad.

He said that the government had deployed a huge force of Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) around the sit-in protestors in the capital last night, claiming that Altaf's statement had averted an attack on them.

"Altaf Hussain wants the issue to be resolved through peaceful means and through negotiations," the party leader stated.

Meanwhile, following Altaf's request of staying indoors,  panic spread in Karachi with people stocking up groceries and parents not sending their children to schools. The MQM leader also said that he could foresee a martial law coming under the cover of the Constitution.

COMMENTS (19)

Tabish | 9 years ago | Reply

I wonder: "Why my comments never get posted on TRIBUNE? I am disappointed now :("

SK | 9 years ago | Reply

I live in Karachi and I use to support MQM when it was a true mainstream party for karachites, but unfortunately MQM too has become a stakeholder of the current system and this sham democracy .

It has become a party to supporting a failed and a corrupt system in the name of democracy which in reality isn't a democracy but an embodiment of aristocracy and autocracy

There is nothing left in this system worth saving or fighting for. The corruption , nepotism , embellezment, unaccountability , ruthless insensitivity to basic human and civil rights have convinced the masses that nothing good would ever come out of the current system .

The system has to change , if it doesn't the corrupt politicans who have no stake in the the true progress of this country would keep returning to parliament in various forms and shapes and then their generations would follow

A new system needs to be evolved where the law makers in Parliaments emerge from the cross section of this society who are honest , educated and had experienced the struggle and adversities of living and growing in a suburban metropolis of the cities and towns the needs of commoners cannot be addressed. You really need to experience first to deliver.

The practise of traditional stakeholders representing selective aristocratic families and their kin's must be purged from entering Parliament through money power and control. MQM had drifted away from its traditional ideologies , and their existing ideology reflects more pragmatic and opportunism rather than principle and idealism. It would discover its true mandate in Sind if ever there is a fair and transparent elections in this country

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