Despite facing political problems in the country and administrative difficulties in Sindh due to the law and order situation in Karachi, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Co-chairman President Asif Ali Zardari does not want to pursue a confrontational path and believes that problems could be resolved through political reconciliation.
This was the central idea presented by PPP leader Senator Babar Awan during is talk with court reporters during a luncheon at the Bilawal House. He had invited them on behalf of President Zardari. “There is a clear difference between mufahimatkar (pro-reconciliation) and tasadmumkar (confrontationists) in Pakistan’s political culture,” he remarked.
He said that PPP’s assassinated leader Benazir Bhutto was the founder of reconciliatory politics in the country, under which the party leadership has brought tolerance to the political culture. “Tasadumkars have produced nothing for Karachi in the past. What would they give now,” he said. Without naming the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz leadership, he continued that some tasadumkars had brought military courts to Karachi.
“Despite enjoying a heavy mandate during their tenure, they neither brought constitutional amendments nor did anything for the welfare of people,” he added. Awan, who is representing the federation in different cases in the Supreme Court, said that the PPP has always adopted the way of tolerance. “Because of this, the party brought a consensus 1973 Constitution, despite the fact that it did not have majority in the parliament,” he added.
He said that people have always voiced against the atrocities in Balochistan, but it was President Zardari, who sought an apology from the Baloch and started the Aghaz-e-Haqooq-e-Balochistan programme to provide relief to people of the province in the form of development schemes and jobs. “It was also because of the PPP’s reconciliatory policy that we managed to get Swat back and the government’s writ was established there,” he added.
“Political parties are not broken by democratic forces or during democracy. This has always been done during dictatorships in the past,” he said. “Dictators also created ‘test tube leaders and political parties’, but they expired after a while.” Awan finished his talk a few moments before lunch and prayer time and left, and reporters were unable to ask him many questions they had in mind.
One of the court reporters, who reached there after the covering Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz Chairman Bashir Khan Qureshi appearance in a court for remand, wanted to ask him if the PPP has adopted a reconciliatory policy for all, then why is it confrontational towards Sindh’s nationalists?
