KARACHI: The founder leader of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement Altaf Hussain has said that the issue of president’s military uniform was being given unnecessary twists and turns by political and religious parties who themselves were either product of military establishment or had backed it fully in past.

All such parties were now shedding crocodile tears in the name of democracy to make their countrymen fool, he said while addressing a crowd in Belgium and South Africa to congratulate him on his 51st birthday. Hussain said that the government and opposition parties held conflicting views on the issue as to whether the president should doff the uniform.

He said that the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), especially Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) as its principal component, had been spearheading the campaign. Not much dissimilar was the stand taken by the Pakistan People’s Party, PML (N) and its allies in the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy, he said.

The Muttahida chief said that the background of these politico-religious parties was well-known to be recounted. People’s memory is not all that too short to overlook the fact that the Jamaat-e-Islami had not only been the "B" team of the Army but had always been at the forefront of supporting the establishment.

He said that the JI remained a part of general Ziaul Haq’s government and the PPP whose role was too evident to be told and retold was a product of the military regime. He recalled: "Who was in the cabinet of general Ayub Khan and who used to call the late dictator ‘daddy’? Who was the country’s first civilian martial-law administrator? Nawaz Sharif too was discovered and given political training by the Army.

Hussain asked with which face these parties were now opposing the uniform. He emphasized that the Muttahida was the only party which was not a product of the Army. It grew and gained its strength from the middle-class. The party had always opposed Army’s intervention in politics, he said.

He said that’s why the Muttahida was targeted with conspiracies by ‘hidden hands’ who used drug mafia to hurt his party and patronised rival ‘Haqiqi terrorists’, and created groups within the Muttahida to break it.

After failing in their designs, attempts were now on to use the underworld to weaken or wipe out the Muttahida, he said and added that on the one hand workers, who had been expelled from the party, were being lured to join the bands of criminals with a view to use them against the Muttahida or give it a bad name and on the other hand attempts were being made to make dents in the ranks of the party through lucrative offers, pressure tactics and intimidation of its workers and office-bearers.