KARACHI: The Pakistan Peoples Party on Wednesday described the fresh ‘political manoeuvring’ of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz in which the PML-N engaged some political parties, making new electoral deals and alliances with political stakeholders mainly from Balochistan, as a rebirth of the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI), which was an alliance formed in 1988 with the backing of the then establishment.

Senator Nisar Khuhro, the president of the PPP’s Sindh chapter, criticised the PML-N and said that the ‘fresh approach’ adopted by the party had made a ‘serious a dent’ in the prospects of the democracy and defied the spirit of 2006 Charter of Democracy (CoD) signed between the PPP and PML-N under which they had vowed that none of them would solicit the support of military to come to power or to dislodge a democratic government.

Speaking at a press conference at Peoples Secretariat, Senator Khuhro said: “What we are seeing today is nothing new for the PPP and people of Pakistan. We all know how IJI was created against the PPP and who created that unnatural political alliance. The current wave of enthusiasm in the PML-N reminds us the same days of 1990s.”

Flanked by PPP-Sindh general secretary Senator Waqar Mehdi and women wing chief of the province Shahida Rahmani, he accused the PML-N of becoming the part and parcel of ‘those forces’ which had never supported true democracy in the country.

“The PML-N is doing what we had witnessed in 2002 in the form of the PML-Q [Pakistan Muslim League, Quaid] and the PTI in 2018,” said Senator Khuhro.

“The way all turncoats had joined the king’s party [PML-Q] in 2002 and [PTI] in 2018, who are now joining the PML-N; it is called a mockery of democracy.”

He said PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif was given ‘state facilitation’ to end his four-year self exile and his return to Pakistan last month. Even the Pakistan High Commissioner in London, he alleged, came to see off the PML-N leader at the airport.

“But all these facilitation couldn’t revive popularity of the PML-N in Punjab,” Senator Khuhro claimed.

“A serious damage to the party in Punjab is the cause of panic in the PML-N ranks and they are looking for some face-saving and making alliances in Sindh and Balochistan.”

Senator Khuhro ruled out any threat to the PPP’s ‘traditional’ mandate in Sindh where its rivals were indicating the formation of a larger electoral alliance to “bring change” and form a coalition government against the PPP after general elections.

“There’s nothing new as we have been seeing such alliances against the PPP for the last many decades,” he said. “Despite all the efforts of anti-democratic forces and tactics against the PPP, the people of Sindh have always voted for the PPP.”

He said that the anti-PPP forces had never succeeded in defeating the party through ballot. “The PPP rule in the province has strengthened democracy and provincial autonomy which has only weakened these anti-democratic forces,” he claimed.

‘No electoral alliance’

NAWABSHAH: Speaking at a press conference, PPP’s provincial information secretary Senator Aajiz Dhamrah said that his party would not make an electoral alliance with any political party.

He asked as to why those who had attacked national institutions on May 9 were being pardoned after holding just one press conference.

He criticised the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan and said that the PPP was the representative party of Urdu-speaking community and not the MQM-P.

Published in Dawn, November 16th, 2023