MQM’s 14 seats unduly given to PTI in rigged 2018 polls: Kamal

Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan senior deputy convener Syed Mustafa Kamal has said the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and the Jamaat-e-Islami have been unduly complaining that their electoral mandate has been stolen in the latest general elections.

In his speech on Saturday, he recalled that security personnel had unduly expelled the polling agents from polling stations in Karachi after the completion of polling in the previous general elections held in 2018. Afterwards, the results of polling in Karachi had been delayed for three days, he said.

Kamal said that the MQM’s 14 seats in Karachi had been given to PTI as a result of rigging in the elections.

“The decorator (who made arrangements for PTI’s public meetings) who had been waiting for his payment was instead given the ticket [to contest the polls],” he said.

He alleged that a new prime minister and a president had been elected as a result of rigged elections in 2018.

He said the PTI’s regime in the past had failed to deliver despite having hundreds of ministers and governors. Kamal further alleged that PTI’s regime had continued in the centre due to tacit support given by the PPP. He said the failed PTI regime had come to an end the day the PPP and PML-N had forged unity.

He said the PTI’s regime despite stealing the political mandate of the city in the 2018 general elections had not completed a single development work in the city. “On what account the people of Karachi who know about your inefficiency could vote for the PTI in the 2024 general elections,” he said.

He lamented that India had annulled the special autonomous status of Occupied Kashmir during the PTI’s regime though Imran Khan had claimed that he had successfully conducted a dialogue with the then US president Donald Trump.

He said the then PTI’s regime resorted to protest only in the form of traffic suspension on Fridays and delivering condemnation speeches in response to the unilateral Indian move of merging the Occupied Kashmir with the rest of India. Kamal said that people had fully understood the conspiracies hatched by the PTI’s founder and would never again believe in his false narrative. He blamed PTI and its social media wing for growing instability in the country.