Former MQM-P stalwart Shabbir Qaimkhani joins PSP

Shabbir Qaimkhani, a former Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan coordination committee member who was one of the main actors in the party’s February 5 split, joined the Pak Sarzameen Party on Saturday.

Qaimkhani had ended his more than 30-year-long association with the MQM on April 4 over the ongoing power struggle between the PIB and Bahadurabad groups of the party. He was the party’s candidate for Senate election on whose seat the two groups had engaged in an altercation.

Addressing a press conference at PSP headquarters, Pakistan House on Saturday, he said that he joined the PSP after a lot of consideration, debate and arguments, and credited Mustafa Kamal and Anis Kaimkhani, the PSP president, for convincing him to do so.

About his affiliation with the MQM, he said that he and Anis had joined the party together and worked alongside for three decades. He said he didn’t want to go into details of his reason to leave MQM-P.

He, however, added, “We need to look back at our struggle and think about why we have been unable to achieve our goals. After 35 years, I am changing the party because it is not the MQM we worked for.”

Downplaying the popular impression that people have been forced to join PSP, Shabbir Qaimkhani said he and others had joined the party voluntarily.

Qaimkhani also asked Farooq Sattar, Amir Khan and others who are in the MQM to join PSP and start a joint struggle anew from this platform. He lamented the division between the PIB and Bahadurabad groups and said that the party has been ruined in their power struggle.

Mustafa Kamal said that it was an important day for his party because Qaimkhani had a strong political profile and had a 35-year-long experience. He added that 100 more MQM-P office-bearers and workers had joined the PSP with him.

Kamal further said that PSP was getting bigger day and day and the growth it has seen within its past two years was unprecedented.

He reiterated his claim that PSP was going to bring its own chief minister in Sindh or at least one backed by it in the upcoming general elections.