The PPP categorically refused to succumb to the MQM’s pressure and turned down its demand for the Sindh Home Ministry which the MQM had been asking since the removal of Zulfiqar Mirza, and also the coveted slot of state ministry for interior which the party wanted for rejoining the government.
“The MQM first asked the government to remove Zulfiqar Mirza as Sindh home minister and immediately after his removal initiated a campaign that the same ministry should be given to the MQM,” an inside source told Pakistan Today. The source said Sindh Governor Ishratul Ebad had asked President Asif Ali Zardari on March 15 for the slot when he was in Karachi to hold talks with the MQM and PPP’s provincial leaders, adding that Zardari had been very forthright in refusing MQM’s demand.
He said Zardari had offered two federal and one state ministry to the MQM, which it did not agree to. The PPP, PML-Q alliance compelled the MQM to join the federal cabinet on PPP’s terms. “The alliance, which came in handy to save the PPP government on the one hand and reduce MQM’s margin to bargain on the other, compelled the MQM to join the government,” he said, adding the MQM had asked for the Ministry of State for Interior, but the president again refused.
“The president told the MQM delegation a day before its announcement of joining the federal government that one MQM state minister could be added but that state minister’s office would be either of labour and manpower or ports and shipping, the two federal ministries to be given to the MQM. “Now the MQM’s state minister will be either of the ports and shipping or the labour and manpower.”
