Daily Times

Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) leader Fauzia Kasuri held a joint press conference on Thursday with Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) chief Mustafa Kamal to formally announce her decision of leaving the PTI for the PSP.

“PTI has been supporting and sending those leaders to assemblies who should be tried for corruption,” Kasuri said, adding that she had been feeling since 2013 that the PTI was losing its track. Kasuri said that in those dark times, Mustafa Kamal and Anees Qaimkhani were the brave ones who fought against terrorism and lies

PSP Chief Mustafa Kamal welcomed her and said that Fauzia Kasuri joining their party was an endorsement of their ideology.

“I hold no personal grudge against PTI chief Imran Khan,” the former PTI leader said.”I belong to Karachi but have I never identified myself as a migrant or Urdu speaker or a Pashtun. I call myself a Pakistani,” she added.

“I am a founding member of PTI, I had high hopes and I gave 23 years of my life to the party thinking that it might bring some change,” she said, adding that she did not wish to join any party that had a history of “exploiting the country.”

“We will see if ‘seasonal birds’ are able to create a new Pakistan,” she said, adding that PTI did a good job in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa but more good work could have been done.

She clarified that she had not asked anyone for a seat in the PTI.

“Imran Khan offered a reserved seat to me but I told him that I wanted to win a seat after contesting elections. He had also offered a Senate seat to me,” Kasuri said.

Kasuri, in a resignation letter that she uploaded on Twitter, criticized PTI Chairman Imran Khan for handing over the party’s reins to ‘electable’ people that she had fought against since PTI’s inception. “It should come as no surprise to you that I have decided to leave the PTI,” read the letter that she addressed to PTI chairperson Imran Khan.

Kasuri’s resignation letter thanked Imran Khan for providing her with a platform to develop her political career and said that Kasuri had became increasingly disenchanted by the direction the party had taken since 2013 and she no longer saw it as representative of the aspirations of the millions of citizens seeking a change in Pakistan.

She said that the party led by Imran Khan was accepting ‘electable’ persons at the cost of workers, who in some cases laid down their lives for the cause. “Sadly, this was the final nail in the coffin,” she added.

She urged the chairman to accept her resignation from the party stating that she could no longer defend the party actions.

PSP chief Mustafa Kamal, while welcoming Kasuri to the party, said that within a short span of two years, his party had accumulated the strength of 18 MPs and four MNAs.

“The Sindh chief minister is playing Sindhi card, whereas the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) is using the Mohajir card,” said Kamal.

He announced that the PSP will not enter an electoral coalition with anyone because it confused workers. “We will contest elections with our own workers and our own symbol,” he said. “It will be our first election, so we will be stepping in very carefully,” he added. PTI Central Information Secretary Fawad Chaudhry claimed that Kasuri had resigned knowing she would be ousted from the party otherwise. She had been issued a show-cause notice for writing an article against the PTI in a newspaper.

Published in Daily Times, May 25^th 2018.