Majority of 43 UC chairmen of PTI will not vote in favour of JI candidate for Karachi mayor election: Saeed Ghani
He said the majority of 43 newly elected UC Chairmen of the PTI had made up their mind to stay neutral in the mayoral poll.
Majority of 43 UC chairmen of PTI will not vote in favour of JI candidate for Karachi mayor election: Saeed Ghani
Karachi: Sindh Labour and Human Resources Minister, Saeed Ghani, has said no matter the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has announced support for Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) in the upcoming mayoral election but the majority of PTI’s 43 Union Committee chairmen will not vote for JI candidate for Karachi mayor.
This was stated by the Sindh Labour and Human Resources Minister while speaking at a press conference here on Sunday.
Ghani said the PTI’s elected UC chairmen in their party meeting had made it clear that they wouldn’t support JI in the upcoming mayoral election. He said the majority of 43 newly elected UC Chairmen of the PTI had made up their mind to stay neutral in the mayoral poll.
He said that PTI Chairman Imran Khan and JI Karachi chief had both been affected by disappointment.
He said the JI leader Hafiz Naeem-ur-Rehman should ensure that all 86 members of his party in the City Council would vote for him in the upcoming poll for Karachi’s Mayor.
Ghani said that he had come to know through people in JI that fellow party members had objections to Hafiz Naeem-ur-Rehman’s attitude. He said the Pakistan People’s Party and its allies would have a total of 173 members in the City Council. He said the PPP was just short of nine members for gaining the desired strength in the City Council for winning the mayoral poll.
Ghani recalled that he had been constantly saying since January 18 this year after the local government elections in the city that PPP was confident to win the Karachi mayoral poll. He said the Sindh government didn’t need to detain PTI’s UC chairmen in order to prevent them from voting in favour of the JI’s candidate.
Responding to the allegation of the JI Karachi leader that the Sindh government did delimitation of the constituencies favourable to the PPP, Ghani told media persons that prior to 2013 the provincial government had always carried out the delimitations. But afterwards, when the Sindh Local Government Act-2013 was challenged in court the judiciary authorised the Election Commission to do the delimitations, he added.
He recalled that PPP’s Sindh government for the first time had done the delimitations in 2013 that were declared null and void by the court. The 2015 local government elections in Sindh were held on the basis of delimitations carried out by the Election Commission, he said. Ghan, who is also PPP Karachi President, said that the latest local government elections were also held on the basis of the delimitations carried out by the ECP.
He, however, maintained that the Sindh government as per the law had determined the total number of local councils in the province. He said the candidate of JI should become mayor if he gained the confidence of majority members of the City Council but if the JI’s candidate failed to secure the desired number of votes in the mayoral poll then he should respect the mandate of the other party.
He said the JI leader shouldn’t accuse the People’s Party of illegally occupying the city if its candidate won the mayoral election. He told media persons that the PPP’s ticket holders who had won the local government elections belonged to the city of Karachi as much as the winning candidates of any other political party.
Speaking about the PTI Chairman, Ghani said that Imran Khan had emerged as the biggest security threat to the country as he had asked his followers to attack sensitive installations, torch schools, and damage worship places in the country following his arrest.
PPP Sindh General Secretary Waqar Mehdi informed journalists that the consultation process was on to finalise the candidate of the People’s Party for the Karachi mayoral election. He clarified that the Sindh Chief Minister while addressing a press conference the other day at the CM House had jokingly said that the PPP’s candidate for mayor election was sitting with him in the room. He said that there were no differences within the party on the issue of the candidate for the mayoral poll as the entire organisation was on the same page on this issue.