Many say that the MQM’s parting of ways with the PPP-led government spells doom for Karachi. The city has been the scene of what appear to be unstoppable targeted killings that have been carried out as a result of bitter rivalries amongst political parties and groups even as the MQM, the PPP and the ANP were part of the ruling coalition. Now with the MQM’s bowing out of government, it is conjectured that more trouble lies ahead unless, of course, better sense prevails and witch hunt or tit for tat tactics are not resorted to.
A fearful sense of déjà vu haunts the silent majority of this city, given the terrible violence the people endured back in the 1990s when the MQM was on the wrong side of the then PPP- and PMLN-led governments, respectively. A similar descent into chaos today can lead to much more mayhem because young political cadres are now more armed than they ever were in the past.
The curse of targeted killings has so stalked Karachi that once it is cast, it acquires a life of their own, and the situation becomes free for all. It is not just the three major parties that are accused of and have been the victim of targeted killings; killings have affected every group and party worth the name, with or without a proven, winning vote bank in Karachi. The PML-N, the Sunni Tehrik, the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, the Jamaat-i-Islami and parties with sectarian leanings have all had their share of victims.
The city abounds in hit-and-run gangsters, saboteurs, abductors-for-ransom and torture, arsonists and paid and unpaid goons and looters. Many such elements do what they do as a going-out-on-the-town activity. Sheer lawlessness of the kind was witnessed on May 12, 2007 when the then sacked Chief Justice of Pakistan’s visit to the city was thwarted. Karachi had a bout of another free-for-all in the aftermath of Benazir Bhutto’s killing in December the same year. These indeed are chilling thoughts.
The MQM has the highest stakes in keeping the peace in Karachi because as a result of any violence breaking out it will be this party’s constituents who, by virtue of their sheer numbers, will end up suffering more losses. The party leadership needs to act with great caution and advise restraint to its cadres. In doing so let it be said that no calculated risks should be taken, because not even one life is worth any mathematical calculation whatsoever — provocations notwithstanding. It is the bait that the party must resist taking, and register its maturity as a dominant political stakeholder in Karachi.
It must also be said that any measure that falls short of holding city-district government elections will not ensure peace and stability in this very volatile metropolis the size of a country. A provincial government that has traditionally shown little interest in administering Karachi effectively is hardly fit for the job at hand. To ask the others to respect the mandate given by the people to the PPP to rule the country and the Sindh province makes great sense; but it makes sense only if the ruling party also applies the dictum to its own working mechanisms, which are not always democratic. To fear that Karachi will not vote PPP into the city government anytime soon and therefore to defer local elections indefinitely is just bad politics.
Such underhand tactics negate all norms of democracy and responsible governance. How could you abandon democratic institutions at the grassroots level and hope to keep such institutions intact at the upper tiers of government? The top of the pyramid cannot hold itself if it is not supported by a wide base; the wider the base the higher the pinnacle. Democracy has to be built from the bottom up; it is not something that trickles down from the top. Not doing so will result in collapse starting from the top, as was the case just witnessed with the unraveling of the Musharraf presidency.
Karachi once again is crying out for its voice to be heard, its elected representatives to be given the right to manage the city. Coalition governments last as long as all partners feel their due share is given to them; they collapse when one or the other feels that they have been given the short shrift. The MQM feels that the latter has happened repeatedly, and this time it was one time too many.
Those who accuse the MQM of political blackmailing, as the party played ball with the government — now in and now out of it — over the last three years, may too have a point. But then that’s what coalition governments are all about. The onus of sustaining a coalition rests in large part on the shoulders of the bigger partner whose job it is to ensure that the smaller stakeholders get a fair deal, not as a favour but as a matter of principle.
Even if the PPP feels that the MQM has been an enfant terrible to manage these three years, it needs to explain this to the people. Any democratic government must know that it is answerable to the people.
—The writer is an editor at Dawn.