Karachi: Giving megacities their due rights and constitutional recognition is a must to avoid disturbing demands of creating news provinces, said Pasban e Pakistan President Altaf Shakoor here.
In a statement, he said that is feared that main political parties of Sindh would use ‘separate province’ card in the coming elections. He observed that the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and ex-ruler Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) are hand in glove to hoodwink the people of Sindh once again in the name of a ‘separate province’ in the wake of coming general elections. He regretted that the MQM and PPP are once again in cahoots to befool the voters of rural and urban areas of Sindh and exploit their sentiments on the issue of separate province. He said both PPP and MQM have ruled this province – there is a long history of their coalition provincial government- but they have done nothing for the betterment of either rural or urban people of Sindh. He said their politics on the issue of separate province is a ploy to complement and supplement one another to befool the sentimental voters of rural and urban areas of Sindh.
He said the Pasban has already exposed this shameful conspiracy against the people of Sindh and demanded constitutional rights for the megacities. He said giving constitutional right to the megacities of Pakistan would bury the politics of separate provinces and ethnic administrative units for good. He said when we demand the rights for the megacities we talk not only about the rights of Karachi, but also for the rights of Lahore, and for the rights of our future megacities.
Altaf Shakoor said that to keep Sindh united it is a must to give Karachi, a megacity, its due rights and this could only be done by amending the Constitution of Pakistan to insert a new clause about the megacity government, in article 140A.He said if the megacities are given their due share of resources and their own megacity administrations, the issue of separate province would die in Sindh, automatically. He said this is why both the PPP and MQM are tight-lipped over the demand of megacity rights as they both fully know that it would be a death knell for their shameful politics of hatred and ethnic-linguistic divide.
He said the Pasban is the pioneer of megacity rights in Pakistan. It has already staged a successful ‘megacity rights march’ in Karachi, which has panicked the power players of Sindh politics including the PPP and MQM. He said we will further raise the megacity rights issue loudly and forcefully on every available forum and platform in Pakistan. He hoped that this time the voters of Sindh would not allow the PPP and MQM to play with their sentiments and they would reject both these faces of the same base coin, as their history and track record clearly show they are not committed to serve the people of urban or rural areas. They are committed to serve their vested interests through massive corruption, misadministration and patronizing organized crime gangs.
Altaf Shakoor appealed to the voters of Sindh not to be hoodwinked by the issue of ‘separate province’ as this issue is being cunningly used to divert the vote of the rural Sindh to the PPP and urban Sindh to the MQM. He said though the PPP and MQM are posing to be political opponents, in fact they are close collaborators using the same separate province issue for their political objectives.