Former MQM-P leader Dr Shahab Imam joins PTI

After he resigned from the party, Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan’s former senior member, Dr Shahab Imam, formally joined Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on Monday.

Addressing a joint press conference with Dr Imam, PTI Sindh president and former federal minister Syed Ali Haider Zaidi said the party would win a two-thirds majority in the national and provincial assemblies in the next general election,

Zaidi said former prime minister Nawaz Sharif in a “comedy show” in London claimed that he withstood US pressure in 1998 and declined a $5 billion offer not to do nuclear explosions. “I wished Sharif would have replied “absolutely not” when Osama [Bin Laden] offered him money to overthrow Benazir Bhutto’s government, but we know the real story behind nuclear explosions. Forget about nuclear blasts, Nawaz doesn’t have the guts to even explode firecrackers.”

Zaidi condemned the harassment of PTI leaders, workers, and supporters by the Federal Investigation Agency and pointed out that Hamid Zaman and Tariq Shafi were respectable businesspeople and that investigation of foreign funding of political parties was to be done simultaneously by the Election Commission of Pakistan as per the directives of the court.

On the appointment of Kamran Tessori as the governor of Sindh, Zaidi sardonically congratulated the MQM-P on finally getting their “man” in the Governor House.

Imam said the PTI was the only viable alternative for the people of Sindh and Karachi who were tired of dynastic politics. He mentioned that the middle class and youth were well represented in the PTI.

He requested educated people to join the PTI to strengthen PTI Chairman Imran Khan. Imam emphatically stated that Pakistan was at a defining point in its history and that it was now or never for the nation to save this country from the status quo.