Amid ‘mini-smart’ lockdown: PPP to hold rally tomorrow to counter MQM-P, JI rallies

KARACHI: Despite the fact that the Sindh government has started to extend the ‘mini-smart lockdown’ to more neighbourhoods in Karachi after a significant rise in the number of COVID-19 cases, the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has announced a rally in the city tomorrow (Sunday) in a move to counter the recent back-to-back political rallies by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) and Jamaat-e-Islami (JI).

In its march on September 25, the MQM-P again demanded a new province carved out of Sindh while the JI in its march on September 27 announced that it would hold a solidarity day for Karachi across the country on October 14 and carry out a three-day public referendum for the problems of Karachi.

Announcing the PPP’s rally during a press conference on Friday, Sindh Education and Labour Minister Saeed Ghani said the PPP would carry out ‘Karachi Solidarity Rally’ in the city on Sunday against what he said the plot of some political parties for the division of Sindh who were practising politics on the basis of hatred and ethnicities.

The rally will commence at 2pm on Sunday from Ayesha Manzil and will end at the Empress Market via Liaquatabad, Teen Hatti, Guru Mandir, Peoples’ Secretariat, and Lines Area, announced Ghani who is also the PPP Karachi president.

He claimed that the upcoming rally of the PPP would prove to be more successful than the previous public rallies and meetings of the party in the city.

He said the rally would once more prove that the people of Karachi had remained and would remain with the PPP. “The next mayor of the city would also belong to the PPP in case the local government elections were held in Karachi in a transparent manner without rigging,” the provincial minister remarked.

He maintained that the standard operating procedures recommended by the government against the spread of coronavirus would be followed during the PPP rally to the maximum possible extent.

Meanwhile, reacting to the PPP’s announcement of its rally, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and the MQM-P said the ruling party in the province had been fanning ethnic hatred in the city.

Announcing a protest against the corruption and bad governance of the provincial government outside Bilawal House, PTI Karachi President and MPA Khurrum Sher Zaman said the PPP was to hold a rally on the destruction of the city.

“Through organising this rally, the PPP has been fanning ethnic hatred in the city whose residents have been facing the Sindh government’s biased policies for the past 12 years,” Zaman said.

MQM-P’s senior leader Khawaja Izharul Hasan said that the PPP’s decision to hold the rally on Sunday showed that the MQM-P’s successful march had panicked the provincial government.

“The PPP should carry out its rally happily in the city because Karachi residents know what its provincial government did to them in its 12-year rule,” said Hasan. He claimed that the PPP would bring government employees and party workers from interior Sindh in its rally.