Masses contact campaign

Fearing the likely arrest of top party leadership in corruption cases, PPP Sindh Council has announced launching of masses contact campaign in Sindh.  Party’s Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will hold public meeting from Karachi to Larkana and may also lead protest rallies while making a tour of different cities and rural areas of the province. This is nothing but another shape of playing Sindh card, the political trick which has lost its attraction among the worst exploited and brutally oppressed people of interior Sindh.

It is a very a blemish chapter of the political history of Pakistan that the two mainstream political parties which alternately assumed power in the center and provinces of Punjab and Sindh criminalised the political culture with financial corruption and killing of innocent people. The leadership of these political parties is now bent upon bringing chaos in the country at a time that situation on the eastern border is tense. The soul searing scenes of bloodshed which was perpetrated in the financial hub of the country Karachi by armed wings of PPP, MQM, ANP and other parties is still fresh in the minds of the people.

PPP co-chairperson and former President Asif Zardari and his sister Faryal Talpur have challenged the decision of Banking of Karachi in the Sindh High Court regarding transfer mega money laundering case to Islamabad. Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) is investigating 32 people including close buddies of the former President Hussain Lawai and Anwar Majeed of Omni group of Companies. Instead of facing the law, PPP leadership is giving this act of alleged financial crime a political dimension by raising twin bogies of intended scrapping of 18th amendment and usurping the rights of the people by PTI led government. Although majority opinion from intelligentsia and legal fraternity is of the view that the amendment has altered the federal structure of the constitution yet the federal government has repeatedly rebutted the false perception created about the scraping of 18th amendment by PPP and ANP leadership. In fact the ruling party at the center and Punjab and Khyber Pukhtunkhwa has razor thin majority in the National Assembly and less number of lawmakers in Senate as compared with the opposition parties. Hence, there is not even a remote possibility of bringing amendment in this legislation.

Rule of law, transparency and accountability are the basic fundamentals of democracy. The western democracies flourished, became functional and strong because the political leaderships in western countries upheld these fundamental to establish social welfare states for providing maximum benefits of democratic systems to the people. They had never attempted to amalgamate financial crime with political culture. But unfortunately, in Pakistan the political elite of feudal and mercantile classes describe the on going across the board process of accountability as conspiracy against democracy, the 18th amendment and peoples’ basic rights. The people are least interested in this self serving agenda of political parties that remained in the corridors of power during the past 11 years and nothing to ameliorate the living condition of people.