LARKANA: Shah Mehmood Qureshi, vice chairman of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, has condemned arrests of president of PTI chapter of Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa Azam Sawati and party workers and warned if the arrests take place, negotiations with the government are believed to be buried.

He said at a press conference at the press club on Saturday that political ‘jirga’ and leaders of opposition parties should take notice of the ‘uncalled for’ step by the government.

He said: “I expect Syed Khursheed Shah, Aitzaz Ahsan, Hasil Bizinjo, Raza Rabbani, Tariqullah of Jamaat-i-Islami and others to raise voice against the crackdown on PTI workers.”

He held the federal minister for interior and inspector general of Islamabad police responsible for the arrests and asked the government to clear its position on why the party workers were arrested when they were going to court for bail. The PTI would go to court against the arrests after consulting its legal advisers, he said.

He said that democracy and arrests could not go side by side and said while addressing Federal Minister for Finance Ishaq Dar who headed the government negotiators’ team “if this (arrests) happens, the negotiations are believed to be buried”. He demanded release of Mr Sawati and party workers and said his arrest would naturally trigger protests in the KPK. The Punjab was faced with the worst flood in decades but the rulers were out to sink the entire system, he said.

Mr Qureshi said that there was no bar in the constitution on demanding prime minister’s resignation which was still very much included in the party’s charter of demands. The PTI was pressing for early resolution of issues but rulers were bent upon dragging it on and on, he said.

He said the success of negotiations depended on the government’s response and attitude.

He urged media to visit dykes of Sindh on which the government claimed to have spent Rs110 billion. “We can easily surmise either the money has not been spent at all or it has been siphoned off,” he said. He said the PPP had turned into a party of ‘Zar and Zardari’. People were still questioning about the killers of Benazir Bhutto though PPP had remained in power for five years, he said.

He said that he was thankful to people of Sindh who voted him overwhelmingly in elections but he was technically defeated through rigging though he was polled 93,000 and 80,000 votes in Umerkot and Tharparkar.

Earlier, Mr Qureshi said while addressing a gathering of PTI workers at the Jinnahbagh that some PPP MNAs were willing to join PPP and said the struggle would continue till the achievement of goals.

PTI leader calls on Mumtaz Bhutto

Mr Qureshi called on the estranged PML-N leader Mumtaz Ali Bhutto at the latter’s residence in Mirpur Bhutto and said the PML-N government had given a cold shoulder to the veteran politician and his son who later resigned as adviser to the prime minister.

Talking to journalists after the meeting, Mr Qureshi said that Mumtaz Bhutto had shown him a document signed between the PML-N and SNF and he was surprised to note that not a single point written in it had been implemented.

He said that rigging was not restricted to the Punjab, Sindh too had witnessed the worst kind of rigging in general elections. The protest would not remain confined to Islamabad only but it would now be spread to Karachi, Multan and other cities, he said.

Published in Dawn, September 14th, 2014