KARACHI: Another sidelined leader of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and former Sindh minister Raza Haroon returned to Karachi on Monday and joined the party of MQM dissident and former Karachi nazim Syed Mustafa Kamal.

Fifty-year-old Haroon, who also possesses British nationality and has been living in London since 1994, became the fifth MQM member to join Mr Kamal. The other four are: Anis Kaimkhani, Dr Sagheer Ahmed, Waseem Aftab and Iftikhar Alam.

Like other dissidents, Mr Haroon also accused the MQM supremo of having links with the Indian intelligence agency RAW, but shied away from presenting any evidence at a press conference held at the DHA headquarters of the still unnamed party.

Mr Haroon was not a known figure of the MQM until late 2007 when Altaf Hussain sent him to Karachi from London to contest the Feb 2008 general elections from a provincial assembly constituency, PS-115 (PECHS-Lines Area), and made him a member of the coordination committee. He won the election and was made Sindh IT minister when the MQM forged a coalition with the Pakistan People’s Party.

After the tenure of the elected local government representatives ended in 2010, Mr Haroon was tasked with overseeing the affairs of the Karachi city government.

In Dec 2012, he had to resign from his assembly membership after he failed to submit an affidavit before the Election Commission of Pakistan saying that he did not possess the nationality of any country other than Pakistan. He was not awarded a party ticket for the 2013 general elections because of his dual nationality.

He was among a dozen MQM leaders who were removed from the coordination committee and sidelined by the MQM supremo in May 2013 in a major organisational overhaul aimed at purging the party of elements involved in “china-cutting, land-grabbing extortion, etc”. Since then he has been inactive in the MQM, returned to London and kept a low profile.

He said at the press conference that after 2013 – his return to London – he visited Karachi five times. “Initially I was in touch [with the MQM], but my thinking got changed when the cases started,” he said, referring to the money-laundering investigations against the MQM leadership in London.

Heaping scorn on the MQM chief, Mr Haroon said that there was no need to hatch a conspiracy against Mr Hussain or plotting to implement a minus-one formula, as he had himself pressed the “self-destruct button”.

He alleged that Mr Hussain delivered late-night objectionable speeches in an inebriated condition and always apologised in the morning.

He condemned Mr Hussain for seeking RAW’s help and inviting Nato and UN forces to Pakistan. “You are inviting Nato and UN forces here but tell us when you will come to Pakistan.”

Raza Haroon defended the ban on the broadcast of Mr Hussain’s speeches and said that every provincial assembly in Pakistan had passed resolutions against him. “Will of the people has spoken,” he said.

He said that the people gave Mr Hussain no mandate to invite RAW or UN forces to the country.

Asked who would prove his accusations as in the past similar allegations had been levelled against G.M. Syed, Bacha Khan and even Fatima Jinnah, he said this was the job of the judiciary and the institutions concerned.

In reply to a question, Mr Kamal said that he would announce the name of his party on March 23.

MQM reaction

Maintaining its past practice, the MQM did not issue a formal reaction to Mr Haroon’s defection as well as his allegations.

However, senior leader Dr Farooq Sattar told reporters that it would not make any difference to the MQM if some individuals parted ways with it. “The MQM is [like] a river and the loss of one or two drops would not make any difference,” he said, while participating in the MQM’s clean Karachi campaign.

Published in Dawn, March 15th, 2016