It’s Dasti’s time for controversy as Mukhtar rights his wrong

Just a day after Water and Power Minister Ahmad Mukhtar’s diatribe against the Chaudhrys of Gujrat, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) member of the National Assembly from Muzaffargarh, Jamshed Dasti on Sunday announced that he would face party colleague Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar in the coming elections.
Showing displeasure with the PPP-Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) alliance on Saturday, Mukhtar had said “I will chase the Chaudhrys out,” but stopped short of saying from their alliance with the PPP. “I will do so as I can go to any extent to get the job done,” he had said.
The PML-Q took a strong exception to Mukhtar’s statement with the party’s spokesman Kamil Ali Agha saying that Mukhtar’s statement reflected of his ‘defeated mind’. “Through his statement he has revealed his future platform of politics other than PPP,” he said, adding that the PPP leadership would be asked to seek an explanation from Mukhtar. On Sunday, apparently on pressure of his party leadership, Mukhtar retracted from his statement, saying that the PML-Q was their ally and he respected Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain.
Mukhtar said that Shujaat was his old friend and was like an elder brother. “The next elections would be contested according to the policies of the PPP. However, importance of local politics cannot be disregarded,” he said. As Mukhtar was righting his wrong, the PPP’s firebrand from Muzaffargarh told a press conference in Multan that he was available for the post of prime minister in case the incumbent Prime Mnister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf was disqualified by the Supreme Court of Pakistan.
Dasti said if the party leadership selected him for being its third prime minister under the current assembly, it would be a matter of pride for him and the area.
Dasti said he still stood firm on his announcement to contest election against Hina Rabbani Khar. He said he would contest election against her come what may.
Coming hard on the Sharifs, the PPP leader said the politics of Sharifs revolved around revenge. He said the Sharifs didn’t want the creation of South Punjab and Bahawalpur provinces. He said the PML-N had not sent the names of its representatives for the commission for creation of South Punjab and Bahawalpur provinces.
He said the N-League leadership had adopted criminal silence over the issues of national interest, and they were doing it intentionally.
“Due to Takht-e-Lahore the South Punjab has become a police state,” he said. The PPP leader said the police were not properly investigating the incident in which women were paraded naked in Muzaffargarh.
To a question he said Imran Khan would spread secularism in the country if he came into power.