Afridi vows to stay in until Karachi rally is held

By Staff Reporter

KARACHI: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Sohail Afridi said on Sunday night he would not leave Sindh without holding a planned Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf rally in Karachi, raising the possibility that the standoff over the gathering could stretch into a second day.

Speaking to reporters while his convoy continued toward Karachi from Hyderabad, Afridi said the rally would go ahead the following day, or the day after, if it did not happen Sunday. “I will stay here until the objective is achieved,” he said. Roads around Mazar-i-Quaid, the site PTI has chosen for the gathering, remained closed, and there was no confirmation that Afridi had reached the city.

The dispute centers on Shahrah-i-Quaideen, the road running past the mausoleum. PTI applied for permission to hold a rally there roughly a month ago, and it had not been granted as of Sunday, according to officials. Karachi’s District East police have said no gathering will be allowed without authorization and warned that holding one anyway would draw legal action; the department said it had reinforced personnel and tightened surveillance around the site’s entrances. Both sides of Shahrah-i-Quaideen have been closed since Sunday afternoon, with traffic rerouted through Khalid Bin Waleed Road, Tariq Road, Kashmir Road and the Star Gate corridor.

Karachi police also contacted PTI leaders to raise security concerns, according to sources, and advised the party’s Karachi president, Faheem Khan, to alter his route toward Shahrah-i-Quaideen.

Earlier in the day, at the Tando Jam toll plaza, police denied blocking the convoy’s route, a claim Afridi had made in Tando Allahyar, where he told supporters, “containers are being placed and craters are being dug,” and said the provincial government should either take responsibility for the obstructions or explain who was behind them. PTI’s central leadership went further in a written statement, accusing the government of arresting party workers in multiple Sindh cities even as PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari welcomed Afridi’s visit online. “If the welcome is limited to Twitter while police arrest workers on the ground, this is not democracy but political theatrics,” the party said, demanding the workers’ release.

At a rally in Hyderabad, Afridi accused the Sharif family of tax evasion and holding undisclosed property abroad, saying they were “sincere neither in the past nor today and they will not be sincere tomorrow.” PTI secretary general Salman Akram Raja also addressed the crowd, saying the party had faced repeated legal cases and describing the September 27 protest as a day of what he called “true freedom.”

Sunday’s friction was a reversal from the night before, when Bhutto-Zardari welcomed Afridi to Larkana as the “city of martyrs” and called for a return to “a politics of tolerance, respect and coexistence.”

The Karachi rally was announced more than a week ago as the intended capstone of a tour that PTI said would carry Afridi through Rahim Yar Khan, Ghotki, Jacobabad, Shahdadkot, Larkana, Khairpur, Nawabshah and Tando Allahyar before reaching Hyderabad and, finally, Karachi. PTI Sindh president Haleem Adil Sheikh said at the time that the party intended to hold the rally regardless of whether permission was granted. “Even if permission is not granted, there will be a rally in Karachi,” he said. The tour is meant to build turnout for PTI’s September 27 nationwide protest demanding the release of founder Imran Khan and his transfer to a hospital in Islamabad.