IS PMLN JUST FOLLOWING ORDERS? | DIVIDE SINDH? NOT NEGOTIABLE. NOT NOW. NOT EVER.

A senior Pakistan Peoples Party figure has insisted that opposition to dividing Sindh is not a party line but the settled conviction of the province itself, after the Sindh Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution rejecting any such move. Taimur Talpur, a member of the provincial assembly, said Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah’s remark that Sindh would be divided only “over our dead bodies” expressed the thinking of every Sindhi, including Punjabi, Kashmiri, Pashtun and Muhajir settlers who had made the province their home. Rival parties that otherwise clash with the PPP — PTI, JUI, functional groups and PML — were “on one page” when the integrity of Sindh was at stake, as were lawyers, clerics and nationalists. The constitution, he pointed out, required two-thirds majorities in the provincial assembly, the National Assembly and the Senate before new provinces could be created; those numbers did not exist. Even if they somehow appeared, “every mother, sister and child of Sindh will be on the roads ready to sacrifice even their lives.” The house had first held a full debate so the province could hear what was in the hearts of its representatives, then passed the resolution — not the first of its kind, Talpur noted, whenever proposals such as the Kalabagh Dam or the six-canal project had resurfaced. Talpur rejected suggestions that President Asif Ali Zardari had softened that stance after a private meeting in London with interior minister Mohsin Naqvi. Any message from the president of Pakistan would not speak of dead bodies, he said; only the two men and God knew what had been discussed, though he believed the speculation that Zardari continued to follow the wishes of Sindh’s people was correct. The PPP, he added, had already transferred one trillion rupees to the federal government and would talk about a possible 28th amendment covering NFC revisions and stronger local government — Sindh, he claimed, was the only province that already ran a funded local-government system — but it would not endorse anything that weakened Pakistan or Sindh. He denied the party was part of the federal coalition, even though it had twice helped make Shehbaz Sharif prime minister, and dismissed MQM complaints of Karachi’s neglect by listing housing schemes for widows, Thar coal power fed into the national grid, mangrove plantations earning carbon credits, and free cyberknife cancer treatment at Jinnah Hospital that he said treated more cases than anywhere else in the world. Support for a South Punjab province was a matter of the constitution, he argued: Punjab’s assembly had already passed a resolution in favour. On claims that the drive for new provinces was an unfinished establishment agenda once accepted by Imran Khan, Talpur said the PPP would not leave its stand, even if that meant sitting at home; PML-N, currently “on the backseat,” would eventually have to speak more openly.