Weak economy to sink politics and democracy, warns Khalid Maqbool

Pakistan is going through a crucial time and no one is making the required decisions. A weak economy will sink the politics and democracy.

Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) Convener Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui said this on Sunday as he addressed the party’s general workers meeting. He said that by-elections would be held in Karachi in March, after which the city would be in hands of the MQM-P.

He declared that the MQM-P would win all those seats that had been stolen from it. He said that this time, a census was being held five years earlier. “Now we should not waste the time and make sure that every person in this city is counted,” the MQM-P convener said.

Speaking on occasion, MQM-P Senior Deputy Convener Syed Mustafa Kamal said that our ancestors had liberated the country. “We will have to come out of our comfort zone. Now we will have to adopt legal and constitutional methods to claim our rights,” he said.

He said that if the rights of Karachi were not ensured, the Sindh government would not work. The MQM-P workers must adopt all the legal ways for ensuring a bright future, he added. Kamal remarked that the party was ready to hold prolonged sit-ins on roads. “We will take back the seats which were taken away from us in the past. Those seats belong to the MQM-Pakistan,” he said.

He lamented that the ruling party was indifferent about Karachi as there was no drinking water in the city along with no sewerage system, electricity and gas. For the last 15 years, not a single drop of water was added to the supply in Karachi, he remarked, adding that the Sindh government was selling water to the people of Karachi by installing illegal hydrants.

He maintained that in two-and-a-half years, not a single job was given to the youth of Karachi and Hyderabad. All the rights of people had been violated and its graduates were committing suicide, he remarked.

Another senior deputy convener of the party, Dr Farooq Sattar, said the people living in the cities of Sindh were waiting for this time. The seats that were taken away by force would have to be returned to the people of Karachi, he stated.

MQM-P Deputy Convener Anis Kaimkhani said the mandate of the citizens of the city was taken away in the 2018 elections. A day earlier, the MQM-P held a meeting of its digital media team in Bahadurabad in which Dr Siddiqui and Kamal announced the 18-member committee of the team.

The meeting decided that Tanzeel Abdul Rauf would be the incharge of the digital media team of the party and its members would include Sobeen Ghouri, Danish Naqvi, Maaz Moqadam, Nader Qureshi and others.