KARACHI: Muttahida Qaumi Movement chief Altaf Hussain acknowledged on Thursday widespread corruption and wrongdoing in his party and gave one week to members of its top decision-making forum, the coordination committee, to mend their ways.

Within a period of less than 16 months, Mr Hussain was ‘charge-sheeting’ his own party for a second time, as his speech made it clear that the ‘cleansing’ exercise’ carried out in May last year to purge the party of ‘corrupt elements’ did not go smoothly.

The charges he hurled at party leaders included ‘selling’ of government jobs. However, he preferred not to name anyone.

Asks members of coordination committee to mend their ways

Speaking from London by phone to a workers’ convention held here at the Lal Qila ground, he announced that MQM’s Karachi Tanzeemi Committee, responsible for organising activities in the city, had been dissolved.

Without naming any individual, Mr Hussain told his emotionally charged workers, including women, that he had come to know that members of the coordination committee did not bother to come out of their offices. They often took Rs100,000 as “commission for giving a grade-17 or -18 job”.

He said that corruption and nepotism had spread to the extent that heads and joint heads of MQM sectors, MNAs, MPAs, town and union nazims and councillors were being selected and appointed on the “basis of favouritism”.

Even as he spoke, plots were being encroached upon illegally in Landhi, Gulistan-i-Jauhar and Orangi Town, he said. “This is happening in the presence of [my] workers.”

He said that MQM leader Aamir Khan had carried out a probe and told him that elected representatives of the party were not even donating money to the party’s ‘Shuhada Fund’.

Several workers complained to Mr Hussain that MQM leaders did not want to come out of their air-conditioned offices or they had become “addicted to luxurious lifestyle”.

Mr Hussain said that he did not want to lead them anymore and the party should allow him to turn his attention to his health problems instead.

He asked his workers to select one person from among them who could oversee the coordination committee and run the party. Upon hearing this, all the workers stood up and began shouting slogans that they would never accept Mr Hussain’s proposal.

The workers assured him that they would protect him when Mr Hussain asked the army and the civilian government to allow him to return to Pakistan for just 15 days.

“I will eliminate the land mafia in Karachi within 15 days. Allow me to come to Pakistan for only six months, I will cleanse Sindh, Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan [of corruption].”

Mr Hussain warned members of the coordination committee and the party’s London secretariat to mend their ways within one week, otherwise they would be removed from their positions. He said that his workers always came first and not the leaders. He said that persons of character would be inducted into the coordination committee and there would be no Karachi Tanzeemi Committee by next Thursday.

Published in Dawn, September 5th, 2014