Not leader but destination: MQM-P

KARACHI: The joint Muttahida Qaumi Movement - Pakistan leadership has re-set the party slogan to "rehnuma nahee manzil chahiyey" (we want rights and not leader), while pledging to secure the rights of the Mohajir community in the country, especially in Sindh, as its primary objective. The joint MQM-P leadership also staked claim to half of Sindh, saying it belongs to them in accordance with the evacuee trust property. 

While advocating a unified Sindh, they said if demands of a province can be raised from Punjab, what is the problem if the same is made from Sindh.

The leadership of both the PIB and the Bahadurabad groups of the MQM-P, including Dr Farooq Sattar, Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui, Amir Khan, Kanwar Naveed, Khawaja Izharul Hassan, Waseem Akhtar and several others stood together at the podium in a gestrure of unity and addressed the public meeting at Tanki Ground in Liaquatabad on Saturday.

Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui said the MQM stands for "Mazboot Qoumi Markaz" and pledged to safeguards the rights of the communities that migrated from India to Pakistan during and after the Partition. He said the Mohajirs are being subjected to injustice since the past 70 years and asked the institutions of the state to ensure that they are considered equal Pakistanis like the other ethnic groups of the country.

The public meeting was called in response to the Pakistan People's Party public rally at the same venue on April 29 - after 44 years, in an MQM stronghold, where the party leaders severely criticised the MQM, and its chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari who had dubbed the MQM as "Mustaqil Qoumi Musibat". He said the PPP "forced a public meeting" on the residents of the area who expressed their annoyance by not attending it. Siddiqui said Liaquatabad was the centre of struggle against the dictatorship and MQM was its vanguard.

Talking about the reunion of the MQM-P groups, he said: "It is your (audience) decision, of the elders and women, to reunite that we cannot refuse for the good of the party and the community, "though noble thoughts alone are not enough, until there is "sincerity," he added. Siddiqui said the public meeting reflected the sentiments of the Mohajirs and their large attendance spoke of their resistance to the "political engineering" in the city. He said his party and the community are being disenfranchised and asked the state institutions to address the problem. "We are seen as accountable but not countable," he said, adding the controversial results of the population census did not take almost half of the population into account. Siddiqui said the urban population of Sindh is facing these problems for a very long time and accused the PPP of designing them. He asked the Chief Justice of Pakistan to take up the issue of population census as many petitions are already lying against it. Criticising the state, Siddiqui said nobody is concerned over the injustices meted out against the Mohajirs and asked if they are not considered as the "son of the soil."

Speaking next, the MQM-P PIB leader, Farooq Sattar, said the PPP has provided the party and its vote bank a chance to show its "spark" and said its support base would never let the party or its leaders be divided. "Its a reverse gear from today," he said, implying the leaders and workers who switched to the Pak Sarzameen Party will return soon.

To the PPP's criticism that MQM practices politics of ethnicity, he told the PPP "it was started by you when you tabled a resolution against Urdu in the Sindh Assembly, at which the Mohajir poet Raees Amrohi said: 'Urdu ka janaza he zara dhoom sey nikley.'"He said the MQM-P of August 23, 2016 will expedite its struggle for the rights of the urban population of the province, especially of Karachi that generates most of the revenue for the country. He predicted the PPP will face the same fate, the way it created problems for the MQM. "What you sow so shall you reap."