In spite of ‘proxy wars’, liberal parties will contest polls

Pointing fingers at “national and international establishments” for ideologically dividing political forces in Pakistan, the self-declared progressive leaders of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and Awami National Party (ANP) on Monday cast serious concerns over the impartiality of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) as well as the caretaker government to hold transparent elections on May 11.

In a joint press conference, representatives of the three “secular” parties also blasted “western powers” and their “local supporters” who had created and left behind the legacy of jihadi organisations that were haunting Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Hinting heavily at their resentment towards the army, the three former coalition partners questioned the role of state institutions responsible for law enforcement in maintaining peace in Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Balochistan where frequent terrorist attacks were denying a level-playing field to the three parties for election canvassing.

Bashir Jan, Advocate Altaf and Niaz Ahmed represented the ANP while Haider Abbas Rizvi, Raza Haroon and Wasay Jalil represented the MQM. The PPP was represented by Taj Haider, Waqar Mehdi and Najmi Alam.

The leaders at the crowded press conference questioned why law enforcement agencies were finding it so hard to deal with “a few hundred” terrorists risking national stability on the eve of elections.

“It is a war of ideologies”

The former coalition partners said that ever since Tehreek-e-Taliban had declared PML-N’s Nawaz Sharif, JUI-F’s Fazlur Rehman and Jamaat-e-Islami’s (JI) Munawar Hassan as “guarantors” for the militants’ negotiations with the then PPP-led coalition government, the progressive parties had been under attack. They questioned the silence of the so-called guarantors over condemning attacks on their election offices and rallies.

“This is not a law and order issue. It is an overt ideological divide between progressive, peace-loving and democratic parties and those who are the guarantors of extremists and terrorists,” Taj Haider, PPP’s general secretary in Sindh, told reporters.

This ideological divide, the speakers said, was created through drawing a “bloody line” to manipulate the May 11 election results in favor of religious extremist groups and their political wings.

“These terrorists are the armed wings of right wing political parties,” alleged Haider who doubted the neutrality of the caretaker interior minister who had already sided with PML-N leadership in media statements.

Reiterating their resolve to resist terrorism through sticking to democratic norms and contesting in a timely election, the speakers also accused the ECP of throwing progressive candidates out of the election race in the name of scrutiny.

On the other hand, they said that ECP’s returning officers had cleared the candidature of more than 55 terrorists.

Appealing to international community and human rights groups for taking notice of what MQM’s Haider Abbas Rizvi called were “nefarious designs” of the “national and international establishmenta”, the leaders of the three parties claimed that the western powers again wanted to hand over this region to the “jihadi organisations” they once had fostered.

“We have been forced to believe that the ECP, the caretaker government and the terrorists are on the same page,” the ANP’s representative claimed.

Referring to Pakistan’s strategic importance for NATO’s drawdown from Afghanistan in 2014, the MQM leader said he was seeing an “international conspiracy” backed by some “local designs” lurking from behind the newly-created ideological divide.

Warning against taking hurriedly-made decisions like past, Rizvi said present support of the “national and international establishment” to extremist elements may again lead to tragic incidents like 9/11 or 7/7.