Army chief should take control of Karachi’s matters: Kamal

KARACHI: Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) Chairman Mustafa Kamal on Sunday urged Chief of the Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa to take Karachi’s matters in his own hands and pursue development and rehabilitation projects in the metropolis along the lines of the ones initiated in Balochistan and the northwestern tribal belt where military operations are underway.

Kamal’s request came at the PSP’s public gathering held in Liaquatabad. Having previously failed at pulling crowds to its events, the PSP this time round managed to organise a well-attended public event, almost similar to that of Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan’s November 5 gathering in the same locality. “The army has been conducting an operation in Karachi for the past 30 years, but a sustainable solution to the city’s problems is yet to be found as the city remains deprived of education, water and other basic facilities,” the PSP chief said while addressing General Bajwa.

Expressing a complete lack of faith in the civilian government, the PSP chairman urged the army chief to tell the government that a military operation will prove futile if development projects remained on the backburner.He asserted that General Bajwa should deal with Karachi’s matters himself as the government was bent upon maligning him and his institution.

Referring to the criticism he would face for asking the army to intervene in political affairs, Kamal said, “Who else can I ask for help when neither the prime minister nor the Sindh chief minister are interested in resolving the issues, but are instead complicating them further.”

Requesting for an amnesty to be granted to workers of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement so they could turn over a new leaf, the PSP chief said that over 1,700 young men are languishing in jails, while around 300 are missing for crimes they were brainwashed into committing by MQM founder, Altaf Hussain. Mentioning the October, 2016 recovery of the largest cache of arms from a water tank of a house in Azizabad, Kamal claimed that the weapons were voluntarily handed over by the youth to the police and Rangers. “If I am proved wrong then I am ready to be hanged in this Liaquatabad.” Reiterating that he was a proud Muhajir, he said the Urdu speaking community was manipulated into hating other ethnicities by those who claimed to be the champions of their rights. “We will have to bury the MQM and its politics to completely rid ourselves of problems.”

He hoped the army chief, who according to him heads the most powerful and influential state institution, will heed to his demand and that the city’s politics will take on a new course. “Our time is coming,” stated Kamal as he referred to his oft repeated claim that the PSP would emerge as a political party with a considerable mandate in the upcoming general elections. Moreover, the PSP chairman came down hard upon the Pakistan Peoples Party-led provincial government, stating that it manipulated the census results of Karachi to strengthen its corruption. “The population [of Karachi] was shown 7 million less deliberately,” he claimed while rejecting the provisional census results.

He accused Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah of lying before the Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Saqib Nisar at a recent hearing at the apex court by stating that the city did not need more water as the current allocation was enough to meet the daily demand.

“Karachi needs 1,240 million gallons of water daily,” he asserted, saying that the infrastructure in the city has nearly collapsed and if immediate measures were not taken the situation could worsen. “If Karachi will bleed then so will the entire country,” stated Kamal as he advised the people of the city to make a decision about their future.

He termed the government a so-called democratic entity as it was not paying attention to Karachi’s problems, adding that the metropolis contributes over 70 per cent in the total federal revenue but gets peanuts in return.

Citing the latest information he received, Kamal said the Karachi Circular Railway project that was to be a part of the developmental programmes being constructed under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, was taken off the list.“CPEC is a game-changer for the country,” he said as he called on the government and state institutions to revisit their policies for Karachi and its residents.