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KARACHI, July 30: The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) leadership is confident that controversies such as the May 12 deaths in Karachi, and the party’s links with the current dispensation, will not affect its vote bank, particularly in Sindh and Karachi.
While the party’s leaders acknowledge that the May violence cost the party its foothold in Punjab, they maintain that the vote bank remains unaffected, particularly in urban areas. Furthermore, according to MQM MNA Haider Abbas Rizvi, the Pakistan Peoples Party’s demand that local governments be suspended three months before the elections aims to rob his party of credit.
Mr Rizvi told Dawn that his party will contest on the basis of a campaign for social change based on provincial autonomy, the accelerated development of human capital and the eradication of feudalism and extremism. “In the manifesto being finalised, there will also be promises of social and cultural development,” he said.
Believing that the federal government should control merely defence, currency and foreign affairs, the MQM is seeking sweeping changes through the drafted 18th amendment bill, to maximise provincial autonomy. It proposes the creation of an Inter-Provincial Executive Council to oversee communications, railways and highways and recommends that the National Finance Commission award be instituted on a permanent basis. The bill further proposes that Article 152 – invoked by the federal government to procure provincial land – should be rescinded. If approved, this will address many issues pertaining to the Gwadar Port and pave the way for transferring port control to the province concerned.
However, the MQM has never before come under such open and persistent public criticism. While the party may hope that the evolution of a new power constellation will dilute this negativity, the fact remains that many people – including erstwhile die-hard supporters – believe that the May 12 incidents and the party’s support to a military dispensation have seriously dented its vote bank.
The massive opposition faced by the MQM has reinforced the party’s ethnic moorings. This, coupled with Imran Khan’s denunciation of MQM chief Altaf Hussain, and the expulsion of an office bearer by a Canadian court on the basis that the party is regarded as a terrorist organisation, has cast long shadows. Mr Hussain’s statement that feudal and anti-people elements are trying to prevent the MQM from functioning as a mainstream national party was a clear indication of the party’s slide into ethnicity.
“The MQM is the country’s third largest party, especially since it transitioned from the Mohajir to the Muttahida Qaumi Movement,” claimed an MQM legislator. “Those who are trying to block our way under the pretext of the May 12 violence have helped return to the Muttahida’s fold those Mohajir elements who drifted away after the change in names. Support also grew in interior Sindh.”
However, the legislator conceded that difficulties would be faced in areas were anti-American feelings are rampant and that conflict between the ANP and other parties in terms of pocketing Karachi’s Pushtoon votes could pose problems. Resultantly, the MQM leadership is counting on mileage earned by development work in the city and the ethic leverage it still commands in Sindh.
In the 2002 elections, analysts had correctly predicted a hung parliament with a weak prime minister but few had foreseen the meteoric rise of the religious right in the NWFP — arguably a result of the establishment spin doctors’ overkill in attempting to divide the vote banks of the two major mainstream political parties. The 2002 elections also saw the defeat of ethnic parties: while the ANP was decimated in the NWFP, the MMA made inroads into MQM strongholds in Karachi.
“While the MQM adopted a more inclusive outlook away from mohajirism and towards Sindhism, it nevertheless relied essentially on mohajir votes — despite giving tickets to non-mohajirs,” observed a political analyst. A definite break with the past still depended on a change in inter-ethnic relations in urban Sindh, prompting the refuelling of ethnic tension to win back the constituency. In this context, May 12 could be the watershed while the All Parties Conference’s London declaration accusing the MQM of the carnage may further reinforce the party’s ethnic mind-set.
In Sindh, the upcoming elections will be dominated by ethnicity — which suits General Musharraf. And though the elections would be nothing less than a farce unless some three million missing names are included in the voters’ lists, the MQM has been accused of fixing the ballot by directing certain enumerators to omit certain names.
