HYDERABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) leader and former
Sindh chief minister Liaquat Ali Jatoi has urged the judiciary to
exercise its constitutional authority in putting a halt to the “massive
corruption” in Sindh by getting the provincial assembly dissolved and
removing the government.
An interim dispensation should
be installed immediately and proper accountability of the government and
lawmakers be started under the judiciary, he said while addressing a
press conference outside the residence of PTI leader Aneesa Waliullah
here on Thursday. Mustansar Billah and other party leaders accompanied
Mr Jatoi.
Several activists of the Pakistan Peoples Party
(PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) as well as some retired
government officials announced their joining of the PTI at the press
conference.
Mr Jatoi described the Sindh Assembly as a
“rubber-stamp house produced through rigging”. Elaborating, he claimed
that “governance is seen nowhere while cronies of [PPP co-chairman Asif
Ali] Zardari have been swindling people, pocketing all development funds
and destroying health, education, agriculture and other departments
leaving the ordinary people even without safe drinking water”.
He
said PTI would not accept a caretaker set-up in which PPP was given any
representation because it [PPP] always rigged polls and such a set-up
would again do the same to defeat its opponents.
The
provincial government had lost its writ to the extent that it was unable
to make sugar millers comply with its notification regarding the
minimum rate of Rs182/40kg for sugar cane. Cane growers were clamouring
for a reasonable price to save themselves from heavy losses but the
government remained unmoved even after some of the growers torched their
produce in sheer disappointment, he noted.
“Everybody knows that more than 50 per cent of sugar mills in Sindh are directly or indirectly owned by Asif Zardari,” he said.
Cronies
of Zardari who included former information minister Sharjeel Inam Memon
had been looting the masses, he alleged, and observed that the latter,
facing a case of corruption to the tune of billions of rupees, was
showered with rose petals by the PPP when he was brought to court for a
hearing.
The PTI leader claimed that PPP chairman
Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari always looked scared while delivering speeches at
the party’s public meetings as he was made to read out the given
scripts.
“It’s learnt that [Asif] Zardari and Bilawal
[Bhutto-Zardari] are trying to become the president and prime minister,
respectively, in case their party comes in a position to form the next
government at the Centre,” he said.
Mr Jatoi recalled his
political struggle of the past and said he and his family had to suffer
a lot as the “Zardari league” implicated them in concocted cases for
exposing corruption by the PPP co-chairman and his cronies. “However,
they could not suppress our voice through such tactics as we only spoke
what the masses felt.”
He said he joined the PTI as its
chairman Imran Khan was a clean man and the party had the potential to
wipe out corruption from the country. He said corruption, nepotism and
favouritism would find no place under the PTI rule.
In
reply to a question, Mr Jatoi said his party would not form an alliance
with any party. “We will definitely win majority in Sindh without
forming an alliance with some other party,” he said.
