Karachi : Senior PPP minister Zulfiqar Mirza has called MQM-Haqiqi chairman Afaq Ahmed as the real leader of the Mohajir nation, asking the people of Karachi and Hyderabad to rise against the Muttahida.
“If Afaq Ahmed is a criminal, extortionist and a bad person and if he has robbed mothers of their children, then Altaf Hussain is a bigger criminal and extortionist by 100 times who has also robbed mothers of their children,” Mirza said while speaking to the media after a dinner at the ANP’s Mardan House here late on Wednesday night.
Showering praise on Afaq Ahmed, who is in jail and facing murder charges, the fire-breathing PPP leader said that the MQM-H leader was the biggest political prisoner after President Asif Ali Zardari as several cases were registered against him but no charges were proved.
He confirmed he had met Afaq not once but twice and would keep meeting him. He said former governor Dr Ishratul Ebad had tried to make him deny his meeting with Afaq but he told Ebad he had indeed met him.
“Afaq is the real leader of the Mohajir nation that speaks Urdu and the people of Karachi and Hyderabad should rise in revolt and get rid of the cursed [MQM leaders],” Mirza said, adding that he would continue fighting criminals and extortionists as long as he was alive.
He said Ebad had been a runaway Muttahida leader and facing murder charges when he was made governor and he had again fled the country. Mirza claimed that the MQM was regretting its decision to quit the PPP-led coalition government “on the wrong advice of its friends”.
Breathing fire over those demanding a separate province in Sindh, Mirza said no one could dare talk about dividing Sindh and said that these demands were coming from those who Sindh sheltered when they were helpless migrants decades ago. “They can only talk about separating Karachi from Sindh over ‘our’ dead bodies,” he declared.
The former home minister also revealed that it was he who had prisoners shifted from Karachi to interior Sindh. He said all those shifted from Karachi jails were convicts. The revelation would rub salt in the wounds of the MQM leadership, who has alleged that their workers have been shifted from Karachi jails to those in interior Sindh to punish the party for quitting the coalition.
The Muttahida took strong exception to Mirza’s allegations, with its leader Faisal Sabzwari threatening to expose the alleged corrupt practices of the PPP government. Talking to our sources, he said it was Asif Zardari who was “Mr 10 percent” and whose party was involved in corruption, and not Altaf Hussain who lived a simple life.
Sabzwari said that it was the same PPP that caused the break-up of the country in 1971. Mirza’s allegations led to tension in Karachi and Hyderabad and other parts of Sindh, where unknown persons resorted to aerial firing late on Wednesday night.
Shops, markets, petrol pumps, and hotels were closed amid intense firing. In Karachi, reports of firing came from the Old City Area, Nazimabad, Golimar, Federal B Area, Shah Faisal Colony, Ancholi, Liaquatabad, New Karachi, Korangi and other areas of the metropolis. A bus was also torched.
Meanwhile, President Asif Zardari and other senior leaders early on Thursday disowned Zulfiqar Mirza’s fiery speech against the MQM leadership, Geo reported.
Presidential spokesperson Farhatullah Babar, PPP Secretary-General Jahangir Badar and Sindh Home Minister Manzoor Wasan described Mirza’s speech as his personal opinion and not a reflection of the PPP’s policy. The Presidential spokesperson said that the reconciliation policy would continue and the MQM had been asked to withdraw its resignations
