Will the Rangers ever leave Punjab, Kamal asks
February 25, 2017
KARACHI: Will the Rangers ever leave Punjab? Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) Chairman Mustafa Kamal started his press conference on Saturday with a question.
“When the Rangers came to Karachi 25 years ago they had planned to stay for only six months,” he said, adding that the paramilitary force never left Karachi. “Will peace return to Punjab four to six months after the Rangers take charge?”
A meeting headed by Federal Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan on Wednesday approved the deployment of Rangers in Punjab for 60 days. Under their temporary new powers, Rangers will be allowed to carry out operations in case of emergency.
The request for deployment of Rangers in Punjab was made after a series of back-to-back explosions across the country including one in Lahore on February 13, in which 14 people including policemen were killed.
Kamal spoke at length over the pros and cons of bringing in the Rangers to maintain peace in Punjab, based on his experience as a political activist and now a party chief in Karachi.
The need of the hour is that political leadership sits together to devise a plan, he said, that even so it was unlikely that such a plan would be successful. “No plan will work for the country until input is taken from leadership at the grassroots.”
Kamal said that the National Action Plan (NAP) included 20 points. "Only two of those points dealt with the army [operations]. The rest have to be implemented by the political leadership"He said to start off those 18 points of NAP should be implemented.
The biggest problem Karachi faces, he said, was the divide between powers and resources. “Those who are in power do not get resources,” he said.
