HYDERABAD, Oct 10: Leaders of the provincial chapter of the Pakistan People’s Party have thrown their weight behind the Sindh People’s Local Government Act 2012.

They said on Wednesday that the party was ready to talk to its estranged allies and President Asif Ali Zardari had entrusted the job to Sindh Minister Agha Siraj Durrani. Even Sindh Bachayo Committee (SBC) convener Syed Jalal Mehmood Shah had hinted at talking to the PPP over the local government law, they said.

The PPP leaders alleged that the entire media campaign of the Sindh Bachayo Committee was being sponsored by ‘Takht-i-Lahore’.

They lambasted their political opponents for holding protests against the government on the one hand and getting their contract bills signed in the middle of night on the other. They said the Oct 15 rally would be successful in Hyderabad.

They chose the residence of their party MPA Imdad Pitafi, which also came under attack on Monday, to address a joint news conference that lasted for an hour or so on Wednesday.

Those who spoke on the local government law and warned nationalists included Sindh ministers Pir Mazharul Haq, Ayaz Soomro, Agha Siraj Durrani, Sharjeel Inam Memon, Rafiq Engineer and Makhdoom Jamiluzzaman, and Federal Minister Maula Bux Chandio, who is also Sindh PPP vice-president.

Pir Mazharul Haq, who is the parliamentary leader of the PPP in the Sindh Assembly and provincial senior minister, opened the conference with the comment that the PPP had seen many ups and down in its political history.

“Those who work on someone’s agenda are attacking our homes. They introduce a new trend in politics which negates the very message that this land of Sufis preaches,” Pir Mazhar said.

He said anti-democratic forces had ganged up against the party. “They are poised to provoke us, but we are the heirs of Bhuttoism and took lessons of democracy from Z.A. Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto,” he said, adding that the PPP leaders had been demonstrating patience for the past few weeks despite being dubbed as traitors.

“I ask them to tell me a single clause of the law that goes against Sindh.”

He criticised nationalists for rejecting the ordinance even at the time when it had not been published or signed. “I have never seen such an immature way of politics in 65 years of my life. Sindh is our mother, no one can divide it,” he said.

He said he, during his student life, had worked under G.M. Syed’s movement while sticking to his own political thoughts and ideology.

He recalled how one of the PPP’s critics Shah of Bhanot had taken him to G.M. Syed during the anti-One Unit agitation. “Shah handed over a pamphlet to me and I was shocked to see it. The pamphlet was inscribed with the slogan of ‘Karachi Na Khappay’ (we don’t want Karachi). After reading it, I told Shah that Urdu-speaking people want to live with us and you are raising the slogan of ‘we don’t want Karachi’,” he said.

“Today the same Shah of Bhanot accuses the PPP of dividing Sindh, which is surprising.”

He also made some very personal attacks against Shah whom he later named as Shah Mohammad Shah, sitting senior vice-president of Sindh United Party (SUP).

“He has no values. His only political standing is that he is the brother-in-law of Imdad Mohammad Shah, father of SBC convener Jalal Mehmood Shah,” said Pir Mazhar.

He said he did not want to disclose who had given money to whom in the 1997 and 2002 elections. The PPP would prove on Oct 15 that it believed in people who were the real base of power.

“I know money is being channelled through Lahore to our opponents. Were only Urdu-speaking people were killed alone on Sept 30,1988 (Hyderabad carnage)? I myself received six bodies of residents of Dadu. Then who killed people on Oct 1, 1988? These were agents on both sides and some called themselves nationalists,” he said.

He said it was the MQM which had accommodated the PPP viewpoint the most. “Ask the MQM, did it really get anything under this system?” he said. “For how long rural areas will not be developed? Rural areas have to be part of the uplift process after being neglected for 65 years,” he said.

He advised critics to read schedules and different parts of the Musharraf LG system and the present law for clarity.

Maula Bux Chandio said nationalists should be grateful to the PPP which had got them elected in the 2005 LG elections. He deplored that today Sindh was faced with such a situation in which homes were attacked. This did not indicate a positive trend of politics. “Such an approach will destroy us and take people to a civil war,” he said.

He said that since it was election time, such issues were being raised in Sindh because in Punjab Nawaz Sharif was using anti-Bhutto slogan too.

He said he knew who had been visiting Bilawal House to get PPP’s ticket for his paternal niece and added that those staging a protest outside the CM house in the daylight had been getting their contract bills cleared in the darkness of night. “Their [nationalists] elder once asked us for ticket of the senate and assured the PPP that he would respond to nationalists, but the party refused,” he said. Opponents should not force him to start making disclosures, he warned.

Agha Siraj Durrani said democracy had been restored in the country after a long struggle and the PPP would not allow anyone to derail it. “These crackers can’t frighten us,” he said.

The PPP had taken two years to work on this local government law. “We gave our estranged allies three weeks, but they didn’t return,” he said and added the PPP was disappointed that its allies who had been working with it for four years were leaving them. The PPP wanted to get them along and contest elections jointly. “But it is an irony that these elected people are following those who don’t have capacity to win even a seat of union council,” he said, adding that the PPP was still ready to talk to them.

“I contacted Murtaza Khan Jatoi and he said that only Pir Pagara will talk to us over the issue if he wants. Now the SBC convener has said that he is willing to talk to us,” Mr Durrani said.

“We can use the same language and respond the same way, but we are the followers of the Bhuttos and this restricts us from doing so,” he said. He said that only dialogue could resolve things, but if the law started taking its course, no one should complain.

Ayaz Soomro challenged PPP opponents to hold a clause-wise debate with him, saying that if they won, he would persuade the allies to review the law. “We have done away with Account 4 of the local government which was introduced by Gen Musharraf and now only the Sindh government will release funds to local governments,” he said.

Sharjeel Inam Memon condemned attacks on PPP leaders and said that it was in continuation of those appeals made by so-called nationalists that pans should be hung on PPP leaders’ homes.

He strongly contested the claim of nationalists that it was a dual local government system. “There used to be only one metropolitan corporation in Karachi and now we have six. There was only one city government in the provincial government but there is no such thing now as the mayor and the chairman have the same powers,” he said.

He said he knew that ‘Takht-i-Lahore’ was financing a media campaign and nationalists against the PPP. “I know who is paying for advertisements in the newspapers and I have strong evidence of it,” he said.

He said people should give up spreading malicious propaganda against the PPP and urged the media to avoid using the term of dual system.