Pak Sarzameen Party Chairman Syed Mustafa Kamal said on Saturday a democratic martial law had been imposed in the country and the local governments had been forcibly seized by usurpers, who were present in both the national and provincial assemblies of Pakistan.
In such a grim situation, the 18th constitutional amendment was of no good, and that was harming the interests of the provinces, instead of safeguarding them, he said while speaking to the media outside the National Accountability Bureau court in Karachi.
Kamal said the chief minister “illegally and immorally withheld the money under the NFC Award after its release from the federation, as if it was his personal property and not of the people of the province”.
“No one dares to ask him why the entire Sindh, including its capital Karachi, is posing a dismal look despite receiving thousands of billions of rupees from the NFC every year,” he said.
He said that Rs 8,342 billion had been given to Sindh over the years under the NFC, but despite that the capital of Sindh was ranked the 4th worst livable city of the world today.
“The problem of the rulers and the opposition is that if the elections to the national and provincial assemblies are delayed, then the constitution and Pakistan get in danger,” he said. “But when the public interest and solving public issues is concerned, all of them are least bothered and commit a sheer violation of Section 140-A of the constitution, and, unfortunately, no one is looking towards this humiliation of the constitution and public.”
The PSP chief further said that Prime Minister Imran Khan, who announced he would provide Pakistan with the best local government system, should take practical steps to prove the truth of his intention by holding local bodies elections first in Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan where his party was in power and then persuade the Sindh chief minister to hold local bodies elections in the province under the same system.
He said around 56,000 councillors from across Punjab were sent home with a single but abrupt signature before the expiration of their term, most of them were PML-N councillors, but not a single PML-N leader, including former prime minister Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif who continuously asked “why I was ousted”, had ever asked the government "why they were ousted”.
Even from the platform of the Pakistan Democratic Movement, there was not a single word about public issues and local governments, and that was why the people had now become disappointed with both the ruling party and the opposition, he said.
He added that public problems could not be resolved without local governments, and that direct election of mayors would revolutionise the country.