KARACHI: The Feb 10 by-elections for the National Assembly seat, NA-250, will in effect be a triangular contest among the Pakistan People’s Party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal. It will be an indicator of how the game will be played on a much larger scale when the general elections are held across the country this year.

The constituency of the most affluent civil and military officials, business community, artisans and intellectuals, and some of the top notch of the financial institutions, and the judiciary, and a host of diplomats, had fallen vacant due to demise of the former Karachi Mayor Abdul Sattar Afghani, who was elected as MMA candidate with 21,462 votes in the 2002 elections against his closest rival, MQM’s Nasreen Jalil, who had polled 19,414 votes.

PPP’s Mirza Ikhtiar Baig had secured 12,105 votes while the rest of the votes were shared by PML-N, PML-Q, some other parties and the independents.

According to sources, about 46 per cent of the residents of the constituency are Urdu-speaking and the rest are Punjabis, Pakhtoons, Kashmiris and minorities (Christians, Parsis, Hindus, etc). The maximum number of minorities lives in this constituency. The constituency has many katchi abadis which are deprived of the basic amenities like water, sewerage system etc.

Since 2002, much water has flown down the creek and significant changes in political alignments have taken place, putting many former colleagues in different camps. Residents are sceptic about the ruling party’s performance because of their experience during heavy rains last year which had badly affected the civic infrastructure and turned the neighbourhood into a pool of stinking muddy water. Still many areas carry the scars of those fateful days.

Talking about providing more jobs and bringing down prices may not be as attractive a slogan for the voter of this constituency as would be the position taken on better law and order, civic infrastructure and security.

Candidates have put up banners and posters across the constituency and have held many corner meeting in their just concluded campaign.PPP’s candidate is its provincial Secretary General Nafees Siddiqui whereas the MQM has put up Akhlaq Hussain Abidi and MMA has fielded Raja Arif Minhas.

At a time when the main opposition groups — the ARD and MMA — are pleading for unity against the regime, they but have failed to resolve their differences even for the by-election that would give legitimacy to the winner for a few months.

On the other hand, the MQM is taking the contest very seriously and its founder, Mr Altaf Hussain, has addressed several election meetings by telephone to drum up support for his party’s candidate.

He recounted the massive development work his party’s elected representatives have undertaken at different tiers. He also reiterated his party’s commitment of banishing feudalism, corruption, unemployment, etc. But to what extent such things and pledges would make residents of big bungalows come out and cast their votes would be reflected in the final result.

The opposition parties, though disunited, are united on one thing, and that is the perceived rigging in the coming polls because they claim that the voters’ list is not up to date and its entries have been fudged to deny the opposition supporters their right to vote. The PPP has already made its concerns known to the Chief Election Commissioner and its candidate, in a recent press conference, had demanded deployment of army to prevent rigging. He had also alleged that the MQM was involved in the fudging of electoral list and planned rigging.

The MMA is glued to its position against the government’s policy which, it claims, are against Islam and pro-America. Serious division within the MMA ranks would be a handicap for the alliance and other opposition groups. In a way, it could be a strategy to help the ruling coalition candidate, just as the MMA had done in the case of the LFO and the 17th Amendment.

This by-election is being contested in a much different ground realities compared with those in 2002 when the MQM was not part of the ruling coalition and the PML-Q had contested the polls on its own. Same was case with the PML-N.

This time MQM enjoys support of the PML-Q whose candidate had polled 4,718 votes in 2002. If added with 19,414 of the votes cast in favour of Ms Nasreen Jalil, the total comes to 24,192 votes. The PPP candidate had bagged 12,105 votes and the PML-N candidate, Mamnoon Hussain, a former Sindh governor, had secured 5,565 votes in 2002. A total of 10,584 votes were cast for the candidates other than those of PPP, MMA, MQM and PML-Q. Most the parties these candidates belonged to in the previous elections are now with the opposition. Had the MMA and ARD reached an agreement on the seat, the opposition would have secured the seat easily.

All the three main rivals, PPP, MQM and MMA, claim of having massive support in the constituency, but despite such a public declaration, one can never be sure for whom the bell will toll on the D-day. Much depends on to what extent the polling is transparent.