PPP never controlled Karachi LG: Taj Haider

Islamabad: Member Core Committee Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Senator Taj Haider has said that while 40% of Karachi is Cantonment area, PPP has never been in control of the Local Government of Karachi since 1979.

The Local Government has either been under the Jamat-e-Islami or an ethnic party created by Zia-ul-Haq in order to spread hatred. No other city in this world has seen ethnic and linguistic tyranny backed by dictatorship on the scale Karachi has seen, he said.

It should be understood that in the Census 2017 the population of all the districts in Sindh was undercounted including that of the districts of Karachi. The splinter groups of the old terrorist setup by insisting that only Karachi had been undercounted are displaying the same separatist and hate-oriented mindset with which their mother organization was created.

Karachi has bled enough at the hands of these groups. Three generations have been destroyed. Yet these splinter groups are trying to fan hatred all over again. Governments of Pakistan Peoples Party in order to bring them in political mainstream have been including them in their provincial and Federal Governments. More than 2500 projects of Karachi included in successive provincial ADPs were implemented through their local Governments elected on gunpoint. While quite a few of their leaders after looting Karachi have fled abroad and are openly and shamelessly participating in ‘anti-Pakistan’ demonstrations, the splinter groups within the country are attacking PPP for misdeeds that they have themselves committed. The only crime of PPP is ‘Pakistan Khappay’.

Urban and rural areas have to progress together. Villages can exist for centuries without cities. Cities cannot survive even for a fortnight without villages. We should understand that unless the economic situation of the rural poor improves, slums shall continue to increase in our cities and there can’t be economic growth unless inequalities are reduced and purchasing power of the rural poor is augmented.

Taj Haider said that PPP as the makers of the Constitution and the 18th amendment did not need sermons on national dialogue. The Constitution defines and lays down boundaries for every institution. PPP is struggling for upholding the Constitution and Law from the PDM platform and that should suffice.