HYDERABAD: Sindh United Party (SUP) on Sunday rejected the recent agreement between Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) and resolved to launch a ‘public mobilisation campaign’ from April 16.

The party has also decided to observe the May 14 death anniversary of veteran Sindhi nationalist leader G.M. Syed in Lahore and hold a conference in Islamabad to seek official status for all languages spoken in Pakistan.

Briefing the media about deliberations of the party’s central committee meeting held in Jamshoro on Sunday, SUP president Syed Zain Shah said that the meeting was chaired by party chairman Syed Jalal Mehmood Shah.

Conference on official status for local languages planned in Islamabad

He said the SUP rejected the agreement signed by the MQM-P with PPP and Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM). This agreement had not only violated fundamental points of the Constitution but would also seek to foment ethnicity and ethnic hate in Sindh, he said, adding that this could be a conspiracy to create a conflict between different permanently living communities in the province.

Zain Shah said that SUP saw this agreement as ‘anti-Sindh’ because both these parties had hatched conspiracies against geography of Sindh and this was rejected by all Sindhi nationalist entities.

He said that SUP’s Sindh Action Committee (SAC) would be meeting soon to formulate a strategy against this agreement and to protect rights of Sindh.

He said his party would hold an Iftar party where preparations for the upcoming local government and general elections would be discussed.

He announced that the death anniversary of Saen G.M. Syed on 14th May would this time be observed in Lahore. A conference would be held in Islamabad to seek official status for all languages spoken in Pakistan, he added.

Mr Shah said that the ongoing developments concerning change of government at the Centre was not a political crisis but, in fact, “a crisis of state”. He said that it was a tussle between the PTI and its opponent parties for the sake of powers, and not for democracy and principles.

He regretted that any party which got powers finally took on state institutions after a certain period with the result that neither democracy would get stronger nor would parliament become supreme.

The SUP president said that his party believed that in order to bring an end to this ‘crisis of state’, a new social contract should be signed on the basis of the 1940 Resolution.

He said his party’s central committee meeting condemned disappearance of its Jamshoro president, Javed Shoro, and arrest of JSQM chairman Aslam Khairpuri. Roshan Ali Buriro, Jagdesh Ahuja, Khawaja Naveed, Ameer Azad Panhwar, Ameer Ali Thebo and others were present at the media briefing.

Published in Dawn, April 11th, 2022