Former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi came down hard on the PPP leadership on Friday for adopting corrupt and autocratic mindset and said PPP leaders at the helm of affairs today would have never been there had Benazir Bhutto been alive.
Addressing a press conference at the National Press Club, the disgruntled PPP leader responded to his critics in PPP circles saying that if disciplinary action was initiated against him for having met PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif, he would also look for options available to him including switching over to the PML-N or the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf.
Clarification:: He clarified that his meeting with Nawaz was a political meeting and it was not aimed at joining the PML-N. He said the PPP had no right to cancel his party membership because meeting Nawaz was not wrong as Nawaz was the same leader with whom late Benazir had signed the Charter of Democracy (CoD).
Qureshi said those at the helm of affairs now were never liked by Benazir, who had appointed him as the next candidate for the slot of prime minister in year 2002.
“We are not schoolchildren that we require permission from the head master,” he said while responding to those critics who said he should have sought approval from the party leadership prior to meeting Nawaz Sharif. Strongly confronting the notion that he had violated party discipline, Qureshi said those who were conspiring against him were the same elements that had been hovering around Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif for the past three years and had been enjoying his patronage.
He also came down hard on the PPP leadership for striking a power-sharing deal with the PML-Q leadership who he referred to were those against whom Benazir Bhutto had pointed finger at for involvement in life attempt against her.
He also held his party’s government responsible for the recent wave of bloodshed in Karachi, saying that terrorist activities and bloodshed was going on while police and Rangers’ personnel were silent on the killings of innocent citizens. He said the government had failed to maintain peace in Karachi.