KARACHI: After meeting a central leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, former provincial lawmaker and leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-Functional Sardar Rahim announced on Wednesday his party’s support for the PTI candidate in upcoming by-election for PS-114.

PTI secretary general Jehangir Tareen called on Mr Rahim at the latter’s residence where they discussed the local political matters, particularly the highly-anticipated by-election in Karachi in which the equally strong Pakistan Peoples Party and Muttahida Qaumi Movement have fielded their candidates.

Lately, the PTI has bagged the support of Irfanullah Marwat who had been a provincial assembly member from the same seat. Mr Marwat won the PS-114 constituency in 2013 general elections as a PML-N candidate, but his victory was annulled by an election tribunal in July 2014.

The Supreme Court had last month ordered re-election in the constituency, dismissing Mr Marwat’s appeal challenging the tribunal’s decision. The by-election is scheduled to be held on July 9.

Mr Rahim, who had been a member of the Sindh Assembly for a number of times in the past while he was part of the PML-N, said at a press conference that his party would support PTI candidate Najeeb Haroon as was confirmed by PML-F chief Pir Pagara a day earlier.

The PPP has fielded Senator Saeed Ghani and the MQM-Pakistan Kamran Tessori for the PS-114 seat. It is PTI’s first major focus on the constituency where Sardar Rahim is believed to have a sizeable following.

During the press conference, Mr Tareen said that roping in the PML-F was a part of the PTI’s strategy to bring all opposition parties in Sindh to one platform. He claimed that the youth of Sindh had been deprived of jobs due to alleged corruption by the PPP. “Jobs are being sold in Sindh. The people of Sindh do not want to bear corrupt leaders any longer.”

Mr Rahim said he had received a call from Pir Pagara a day earlier in which the latter asked him to meet PTI leaders and assure them of PML-F’s support for the PTI candidate. “We have trust in the PTI candidate and we believe he will serve the people,” he said and accused other parties in the race of doing nothing in the past.

He criticised the federal and provincial governments for what he called ignoring Karachi in the budgets which were prepared without considering the NFC Award. The PML-F leader said people got fed up with the rulers and were waiting for someone who could change their life for better.

Mr Tareen said the PML-F’s support would help a great deal to his party’s election campaign. “We are here to stay. People have tested all and got dejected. PTI is their last hope. We’ll never betray them.”

He said he had visited the constituency the other day and the sight of the neighbourhood was hard to please. He termed the local government system a farce, saying the real local government system was the one in which people’s problems were solved at the local level instead of at the mercy of the provincial government.

The PTI leader claimed that the LG system in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was fully empowered. Had the governments given funds to Karachi regularly in the past, the story would have been different altogether, he said.

The MQM won the PS-114 seat thrice in 1990, 1993 and 2008.

The PPP has never succeeded in the past, yet it is confident to change the history this time cashing in on the MQM’s internal crisis.

Published in Dawn, June 15th, 2017