PTI submits resolution against Mohsin Naqvi’s appointment as Punjab caretaker CM

The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) emerging victorious in the recent local government elections in Karachi feels like Taliban winning the mayoral election in New York City (NYC), according to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) Khurrum Sher Zaman.

Zaman, the PTI’s parliamentary party leader in the provincial assembly, was talking to journalists at the PA on Tuesday after he and his fellow party lawmakers submitted a resolution to the assembly secretariat against the appointment of Mohsin Naqvi as Punjab’s caretaker chief minister.

The PTI leader claimed that a script had been prepared beforehand to manage the LG elections in Karachi to decide unlawfully how many seats the PPP and the Jamaat-e-Islami would win in the polls. “Even PPP activists are concerned how their party succeeded in Karachi’s polls.”

He said Karachi’s residents remain deprived of the facilities of clean drinking water, and decent public transport and health systems. He added that the army had been approached beforehand for the deployment of its troops on Election Day because of apprehensions about rigging in the LG polls in the city.

He also said the LG law in Sindh is yet to be amended in accordance with Article 140-A of the constitution following the directions of the Supreme Court. Zaman said the ruling PPP looks after only its own interests in the PA. He said the PTI’s legislators in the House were waiting for the call of party chief Imran Khan, adding that once it was received, they would tender their resignations.

He claimed that Naqvi’s appointment as Punjab’s caretaker CM was tantamount to committing a mockery of the country’s constitution and governance system because the man had entered into a plea bargain deal. He also claimed that everyone knows that Naqvi was the frontman and a crony of former president Asif Ali Zardari, and that Punjab’s acting CM was not a politically neutral person.

He mentioned that the names proposed by the PTI for the post of acting CM had nothing to do with the party because they were neutral persons, and they were public office-holders during the previous regime of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz.

He said that 26 PTI lawmakers in the Sindh Assembly had rejected Naqvi’s appointment. He claimed that the present chief election commissioner (CEC) had been trying to destabilise the country. He pointed out that Khan had already declared that transparent general elections cannot be held in the country in the presence of the incumbent CEC.

Zaman claimed that the Election Commission of Pakistan wants to manage the upcoming polls in Punjab just like it had conducted the recent LG elections in Karachi.

In a press statement on Sunday, Sindh PPP General Secretary Waqar Mehdi, who is also a senator, had said that the residents of Karachi had rejected the PTI after they were given the opportunity to vote in fair elections.

He said former prime minister Imran Khan during his stint in power had hoodwinked the people of Karachi who in turn did not vote in favour of the PTI candidates in the latest local government polls.