MQM-P to rally against ‘PPP’s discriminatory policies’ on April 23

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) has announced staging a protest rally on Sunday against what the party described as the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party’s corrupt practices and discriminatory policies.

At a presser held at the party’s new temporary secretariat in Bahadurabad on Tuesday, MQM-P deputy convener Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui said the rally will be taken out from Liaquatabad number 10 to the Mazar-e-Quaid on April 23.

The decision came at a time when the Pak Sarzameen Party’s sit-in camped outside the Karachi Press Club entered 13th day against the Sindh government for keeping the city ‘deprived of its due rights’.

Speaking at the press conference, MNA Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui said the MQM-P had decided to resume its political, constitutional and legal struggle against the PPP’s discrimination, injustice and bigotry towards the urban centres of the province.

“Our movement has entered its defining moments,” he said, adding that the time had come to remove the line drawn 40 years ago between the urban and rural Sindh. “The wall that was created on the basis of narrow-mindedness by the PPP must be pulled down,” he added.

For the last so many decades, he said, the MQM won with thumping majority as the people put their trust in the party. “For this reason, we issued white paper against the PPP. We have been succeeded in conveying our message to the people,” he said.

He said former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto only imposed the quota system in Sindh with an excuse to facilitate the underprivileged people living in the rural parts of the province.

Had this claim been true, he said, Bhutto would have enforced the quota system in all the other provinces as well. “The quota system was enforced with a racist mindset against people living in cities. It showed that the PPP was scared of the people of Karachi.”

He appealed to the people to make the party’s rally successful by participating in large numbers .“The rally will prove that Karachi still belongs to MQM.” Party leaders, including Amin-ul-Haq, Shabbir Qaimkhani, and Abdul Qadir Khanzada, were also present in the press conference.