KARACHI: Faced with a serious internal crisis after it dissociated itself from the London-based supremo, the Dr Farooq Sattar-led Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan announced on Monday boycott of the Nov 24 by-election on a National Assembly seat (NA-258) in Karachi’s Malir district.

The NA-258 seat fell vacant after the resignation of Abdul Hakeem Baloch, who quit the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and joined the Pakistan Peoples Party. He is now contesting the by-election from the same constituency on a PPP ticket.

While the MQM-P put the blame of their boycott on the Sindh government for its ‘misuse of government resources’, sources said the party took the decision in view of some recent incidents in which they faced stiff resistance from loyalists of MQM founder Altaf Hussain.

First, Mr Hussain’s loyalists outnumbered MQM-P leaders and workers in Azizabad a few days ago when Mayor Waseem Akhtar reached there in a procession to pay his respect to the Yadgar-i-Shuhada.

Then there was thin attendance at a party’s public meeting in Mehmoodabad and a video was circulating on social media showing empty chairs while Dr Sattar was making a speech. Mr Hussain’s loyalists also routinely challenge the MQM-Pakistan’s leadership by raising pro-Altaf slogans in their public meetings.

The sources said the party knew it could not win the by-election as a majority of voters in the constituency were not Urdu-speaking and it had never won the seat since the 2002 general election.

However, they said that in this situation the MQM-P leadership feared that if contested, the number of votes it would get in the by-election might expose its claim that its support base was still intact and the people actually supported their actions, including dissociation from Mr Hussain.

In the May, 2013 general election, MQM candidate Ahmed Gabol got 17,854 votes and came at the fourth position as then PML-N candidate Hakeem Baloch won the seat by securing 52,751 votes, followed by PPP’s Abdul Razzaq Raja (36,329) and independent candidate Jam Abdul Kareem Jokhio, who bagged 29,948 votes.

According to a statement, the coordination committee of the MQM-P in a meeting held at the party’s temporary headquarters in PIB Colony reviewed the “current situation and the by-election on NA-258”.

“After deliberations, the MQM-Pakistan unanimously decided to boycott the by-election,” it added. “In the past the Sindh government had abused state resources and used unscrupulous elements, including terrorists, to get favourable results and the same practice is still going on in the NA-258 by-election.”

Condemning the illegal use of state resources, it said that as the MQM was not allowed to freely participate in the election, it had no option but to boycott t.

The PML-N is not contesting the by-election and the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, whose candidate got the fifth position with 17,697 votes in the 2013 general election, has also announced a boycott of the by-poll.

Published in Dawn November 22nd, 2016