KARACHI: Senior Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader Sharmila Faruqui has lashed out at the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P), stating that their entire political existence revolves around exploiting issues in Karachi for vested interests. Speaking during the program ‘Sham-e-Ramzan’, Faruqui claimed that the MQM-P never misses an opportunity to politicize tragic incidents, specifically highlighting the recent Gul Plaza fire and the Baldia Town factory tragedy as examples.
Faruqui remarked that MQM-P’s politics begins and ends with Karachi, asserting that they have always played politics over corpses. “Whether it’s the Gul Plaza incident or the Baldia Town factory fire, everyone knows who hindered the fire brigade’s operations in the past,” she said. Addressing the MQM-P’s recurring demand to hand Karachi over to the Federation or create a new province, the PPP leader dismissed it as an old tactic dating back to the era of Altaf Hussain. She emphasized that there is a constitutional process for creating new provinces and that such demands cannot be made every time an incident occurs.
Accusing the party of maintaining a “negative role” in every crisis that hits the city, she suggested that without such politics, the MQM-P would lose its relevance. Contrasting this with her party’s leadership, Faruqui stated that PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari maintains a keen eye on the city’s affairs, frequently meeting the Chief Minister and provincial ministers to track performance. She concluded by noting that Bilawal personally visits various roads and has been actively engaging with Karachi’s business community to resolve their issues, while the opposition continues to rely on divisive rhetoric.
