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PPP stalwart Sathi Ishaque joins Muttahida

By Shamim Bano
April 28, 2016

Karachi

Advocate Sathi Ishaque said goodbye to his 36-year-long association with the Pakistan People’s Party along with another senior lawyer Amir Meraj Ansari on Wednesday and announced his joining the Muttahida Qaumi Movement at a press conference held at the Khursheed Begum Memorial Hall.

Amir Khan, senior deputy convener of the MQM, welcomed Ishaque and Ansari into the party’s fold. He said their joining his party showed that the negative propaganda and targeted operation against the MQM hadn’t worked and the people of the city still gave their mandate to the party.

He said the people had rejected the black sheep who were now spewing venom on people who gave them an identity. He said he was thankful that the Muttahida was rid of them.

Upon his arrival to Nine Zero, Sathi Ishaque was accorded a warm welcome by party members and was showered with rose petals all the way till the Khursheed Begum Memorial Hall, where Amir Khan presented him with a bouquet.

Ishaque started his political career from the Pakistan Students Federation (PSF) in Karachi University at the age of 18, in 1978.

Three years later in 1981, he was elected as the unit incharge of the PSF and went on to serve as its president from 1984 to 1987.

Talking to The News over why he had left his long association with the PPP and joined the MQM, Ishaque said after a moment’s thought that he gave 36 years of his life to the party but instead the current leaders set old people aside and appointed their new cronies to top slots. “Asif Ali Zardari called me from the US but I did not attend my phone. I have left the party and I don’t want to say anything,” he said. “I don’t ask for reward but respect or even recognition for my services would be enough.”

Ishaque was one of the student leaders to have organised funeral prayers in absentia after the hanging of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, under the trying times of General Zia-ul-Haq.

Answering another question, he said he had not conveyed his grievances to any PPP member or senior leader. “Chief Minister Sindh Qaim Ali Shah, during his seven years of holding the post, has never once contacted me or invited any of the old activists to any meeting or  gathering. It is as if we don’t exist,” he said.

Sathi served as a judge in the drug court in 2012 and was also the secretary information of the Peoples Lawyers Forum between 1988 and 1990. Earlier, he had served as the secretary information for the PPP’s Karachi division between 1991 and 1993.

Ishaque also served as an additional information secretary in from 1994 to 1996 and was also a member of the PPP federal council in 1998.