Former Muttahida lawmaker jumps ship to Peoples Party

Muhammad Saleem Rajput, a former member of the Provincial Assembly of Sindh belonging to the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), announced on Saturday that he has joined the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) along with his political associates.

The former MPA made the announcement to this effect while speaking at a news conference on Saturday along with Sindh Education and Labour Minister Saeed Ghani and other PPP leaders, including former MQM MNA from Karachi Ali Rashid, who had joined the province’s ruling party last year.

Speaking on the occasion, Ghani said that they are keen on developing the entire province, including the country’s financial hub Karachi, but it seems that Prime Minister Imran Khan, who is oblivious of the constitution, and his cabinet members have been demonstrating a non-serious attitude towards this cause.

The labour minister said that people belonging to different political and religious parties have been willingly joining the PPP in large numbers, which illustrates quite well how popular Sindh’s ruling party is.

He welcomed the former MQM lawmaker on board and the other new entrants to the PPP, saying that their decision to join the party would surely further strengthen the Peoples Party in Karachi as well as in the rest of the urban parts of the province.

The former MQM MPA said on the occasion that he has joined the PPP to use the party’s platform to struggle for putting an end to the injustices meted out to the people of the urban areas of Sindh in the past on the pretext of lack of authority.

Without mentioning its name, the former lawmaker’s reference was to his former party, whose leaders often complain about the lack of powers in the case of elected local government representatives.

A former legislator from Sukkur, Rajput reposed his complete confidence in the leadership of Bilawal Bhutto Zardari as being a young and able leader of the Peoples Party. He said that God willing, the injustices committed with the urban areas of the province, including the metropolitan city, and the policy of politicking on the basis of conflict would come to an end.

Former MNA Rashid said that they have been contacting the MQM and other like-minded political parties. He claimed that the PPP would emerge as a majority political party in the urban areas in the result of the forthcoming local government elections.