PDM questions PM’s silence over Karachi incident

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) on Wednesday while extending its solidarity to the Sindh government and support to the Sindh Police questioned the silence of Prime Minister Imran on Karachi incident saying that prime minister was hiding and was indifferent to the whole matter.

“We stood with the principled stance of the Sindh Police and whatever happened with Sindh IGP is before everyone,” said former prime minister and PDM Secretary General Shahid Khaqan Abbasi while addressing a press conference along with former prime minister and PDM Senior Vice President Raja Pervaiz Ashraf and Akram Khan Durrani, Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri and Ahsan Iqbal here on Wednesday after the PDM meeting.

Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said if there had been supremacy of the constitution, the prime minister would have made a telephone call to Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah on the incident and sought a report from Rangers and intelligence agencies. “But did the prime minister deliver a speech or issue a statement?” he questioned.

He asked the prime minister whether he did not care about the Federation or worried at all about the provinces. “But the prime minister was concerned how to deal with his political opponents,” he said.

Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari had to make a request to Chief of Army Staff to take notice of it. He said, “We have to see where the matter is going and what the Constitution says. Today, the prime minister of the country is dragging the Pakistan Army into his personal politics,” he said.

He said the army chief was taking notice to pacify things but regrettably the prime minister was misusing his authority to trigger a clash between the Federation and the province. He said every Sindhi now is feeling unsafe when the IGP of province was picked up late at night. “The prime minister was unaware of the price hike, country’s economic situation and miseries of people but busy in political victimisation of the political opponents,” he said.

Raja Pervaiz Ashraf said the federal government, under a planned conspiracy, seeks to spread chaos in the country. He alleged that throughsystematic planning it wants to destabilise the country.

He said PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari handled the issue wisely and the Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa also directed inquiry into the matter. “We have full confidence in the institutions for holding the inquiry into right directions, “ he said.

Raja Pervaiz Ashraf said the questions arises why such a situation created. “The prime minister was hiding as it was the responsibility of the prime minister to take up this matter,” he said adding that whether it should be assumed that such a situation created in Sindh deliberately.

He said that the prime minister was irked after witnessing the scale of the gathering at the Pakistan Democratic Movement rally held in Karachi on Sunday. “The prime minister is dragging the institutions into politics,” he said. He said that the opposition does not aim to sow seeds of discord and instead wishes to promote unity to strengthen the nation. “The prime minister must think carefully before saying anything. I, too, have served the country as prime minister,” he said.

Referring to sit-in of Lady Health Workers, he said that our mothers and sisters have been sitting in front of Parliament. “The people of Pakistan are fed up and have come out and it is now writing on the wall that people have rejected your government,” he said.

He said the PDM will hold its planned public rally in Quetta on October 25. Opposition leader in the Provincial Assembly of Khyber Pukhtunkhwa Akram Khan Durrani said it was grave situation as what was happening today had not happened in the country’s history. “We have told the nation after the elections that these are fake and selected rulers,” he said.

He said the incident of Karachi was shameful and the federal ministers were supporting such kind of incidents.

He said the federal government is intervening in the matters of the provincial governments. He asked the journalists not to support the government as they are also victim of the censorship in the current government.

Durrani said name one mega project that has been started [by the PTI government] in the entire country. “No one taking notice of burning of the BRT buses in Peshawar and corruption in billion tree tsunami,” he said.

JUI-F senior leader Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri said the prime minister was only hurling threats on his political opponents. “The prime minister ordered jail authorities not to provide bed to Shahbaz Sharif,” he said. He said the federal government has tried to snatch the islands of Sindh and Balochistan through an ordinance and they will not allow them to take these islands.