KARACHI: Pak Sarzameen Party chairman Syed Mustafa Kamal has condemned the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan for giving the vote of confidence to Prime Minister Imran Khan without getting reversed the government’s decision to accept the controversial census. He said people of Karachi would hold them accountable for betraying Karachiites.

He also alleged that the MQM-P representatives gave the trust vote to the PM in exchange of their “perks and privileges”.

On Saturday, PM Khan took the vote of confidence from MNAs belonging to his party, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, and its coalition partners in the National Assembly. A total of 178 MNAs reposed trust in the PM’s leadership and the support of seven MQM MNAs was crucial as without them he would have lost majority in the house.

After the trust vote, MQM-P convener Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui made a speech in the house in which he asked the prime minister to fulfil his promises to his party, include it in decision-making process and take action to recover nearly 100 “missing” workers. However, he did not mention anything about the census despite the fact that his party’s representative in the cabinet wrote a dissenting note when the federal cabinet accepted the census results in December.

Criticising the MQM-P for what he called failing to act on the genuine grievances of Karachi, PSP chief Kamal said that if the MQM-P was really sincere with the people of Karachi, it would have raised the issue of the controversial census and demanded a five per cent audit of census blocks in Karachi to ascertain the real population of the metropolis before giving the trust vote to the PM.

Speaking to PSP workers via social media, he said the people of Karachi would have been grateful if the “so-called representatives of the city” had managed to get reversed the federal cabinet’s decision to approve the controversial census of Karachi and ensured a fresh, transparent and correct population count.

But, instead, they made demands of “portfolios, perks and privileges and opening of party offices”, he claimed, adding that it was tragic that the elected representatives from Karachi in the National Assembly and the Senate were taking “anti-Karachi” steps for their personal interests at the cost of public interests.

“Now the people of Karachi should understand who is exploiting their votes. Karachiites must hold accountable all their elected representatives, including the federal and provincial governments,” he said.

He added that the PSP got a comprehensive strategy for resolving all issues of the country from Karachi to Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. “The real democracy will prevail when institutions are strengthened by devolution of powers and resources at the grassroots level,” he added.

Published in Dawn, March 8th, 2021