Naimat Khan
KARACHI: Muttahida Qaumi Movement lawmaker, Heer Soho, who had voted in Senate elections for the PPP candidate, on Thursday defected to the ruling Pakistan People’s Party.
While addressing news conference along with PPP women’s wing President Faryal Talpur, Heer Soho, who elected to Sindh Assembly on MQM, said she remained with MQM in its difficult times but the party had now become a joke.
“I can’t be associated with a joke anymore. The factions have made joke of MQM on Feb 5,” she said.
“I wasn’t satisfied with the MQM now so I decided without any greed to join PPP so that I may serve my people,” she said.
The MPA claimed that there is no respect for women in the MQM-P, adding that she will reveal the party’s treatment of women in a press conference later.
Soho also said that she had joined the PPP the day she attended a dinner at Sindh CM House prior to the Senate elections on Saturday.
During Saturday’s Senate polls, the MQM-P suffered a setback by gaining only one seat despite being the second largest party in the Sindh Assembly.
MQM-P chief Farooq Sattar had blamed the result on party MPAs selling their votes to the PPP.
Meanwhile, there were also reports another MQM-P MPA Naila Muneer had also joined PPP, however, she has not formally announced joining the party.
Naila Muneer had also attended the dinner reception at CM House with Heer Soho.
Ms Soho, originally from Thatta, had met the PPP high-ups at the dinner on March 2 — a day before the Senate polls.
MPA Shazia Javed ‘tries to end her life’ following social media criticism
Graffiti terming her a “traitor of the MQM” also appeared in part of her home district. After MPA Bilquis Mukhtar, who had joined the Pak Sarzameen Party when the MQM was still united under the leadership of London-based Altaf Hussain, Ms Soho is the second woman lawmaker to quit the Muttahida.
In her brief talk with the media, Ms Soho said she would hold a press conference soon to reveal why she left the MQM. However, she said that women were not being respected in the MQM-P. Although Ms Soho did not elaborate, sources said she was referring to a recent incident in which another woman MPA of the party was ridiculed and mocked on social media in such a manner that she allegedly tried to end her life.
MPA Shazia Javed, whose first husband MQM worker Farooq Patni aka Dada was killed in an alleged police encounter over 22 years ago, was brought to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital unconscious on Monday evening.
She was admitted to the intensive care unit of the hospital and later shifted to a ward for treatment.
Her son told the media at the hospital that she was under a lot of stress following the Senate election. He said she “wasted” her vote, but did not cast it for the PPP.
He also said that his mother did not try to end her life.
On Tuesday, Abbasi Shaheed Hospital’s medical superintendent Dr Anwar said that he believed that in the prevailing political situation, “it is possible that she was experiencing severe mental stress”.
