There was a rumour that the MQM headquarters (known as nine-zero') in Karachi had been hit and damaged badly. Also that Farooq Sattar, a prominent MQM leader had been injured. The city Nazim came on tv to deny this and asked people to stay calm, but the rumour had taken its toll. People were out on the street in a jiffy. Rioting. shutting shops down. cordoning off petrol pumps. Food and petrol and medicines - inaccessible for 3 days - have again become impossible to reach. I got out fom my house - a fairly decent part of town - to buy my diabetes medicine which I had run out of completely last night (and to replenish food stuff, too) - and barely managed to go near the main road when the traffic became impossible and we got jammed. I believe 2-3 roads away a car was set on fire according to my driver who had gone out to have a meal. We managed to back out in a bit and went via a back street to a medical centre which has a store, too, and got my medicine. The main door to it was locked. The emergency door had to be used. There was a burnt car outside the medical centre - a grim reminder of the rioting a couple of days ago. Am back. Food's no problem ... have a friend/nighbour (the doctor who appears on the assassination theory video on my blog) and others, so we can hole up for a couple of days ... But I think this will all be over tonight (at least until some other thing happens). Who started the rumours? Who knows ... but the consensus among the people i have phoned, chatted with, or spoken to so far (my driver, a friend's driver, colleagues, friends, relations - and only one of the lot has ever been a ppp supporter!) is that it's the government or the 'agencies' trying to create a situation that would justify postponing the elections. If held now, there's a guarantee of the PPP winning on a wave of sympathy votes and sharing power with Nawaz's party ... and that Mush and his cronies would not get many votes without army intervention.
There was a rumour that the
Submitted by Zaheer on Mon, 31/12/2007 - 16:40.There was a rumour that the MQM headquarters (known as nine-zero') in Karachi had been hit and damaged badly. Also that Farooq Sattar, a prominent MQM leader had been injured. The city Nazim came on tv to deny this and asked people to stay calm, but the rumour had taken its toll. People were out on the street in a jiffy. Rioting. shutting shops down. cordoning off petrol pumps. Food and petrol and medicines - inaccessible for 3 days - have again become impossible to reach. I got out fom my house - a fairly decent part of town - to buy my diabetes medicine which I had run out of completely last night (and to replenish food stuff, too) - and barely managed to go near the main road when the traffic became impossible and we got jammed. I believe 2-3 roads away a car was set on fire according to my driver who had gone out to have a meal. We managed to back out in a bit and went via a back street to a medical centre which has a store, too, and got my medicine. The main door to it was locked. The emergency door had to be used. There was a burnt car outside the medical centre - a grim reminder of the rioting a couple of days ago. Am back. Food's no problem ... have a friend/nighbour (the doctor who appears on the assassination theory video on my blog) and others, so we can hole up for a couple of days ... But I think this will all be over tonight (at least until some other thing happens). Who started the rumours? Who knows ... but the consensus among the people i have phoned, chatted with, or spoken to so far (my driver, a friend's driver, colleagues, friends, relations - and only one of the lot has ever been a ppp supporter!) is that it's the government or the 'agencies' trying to create a situation that would justify postponing the elections. If held now, there's a guarantee of the PPP winning on a wave of sympathy votes and sharing power with Nawaz's party ... and that Mush and his cronies would not get many votes without army intervention.
Zaheer