MQM’s Tough Choices

By Amir Zia

June 30, 2013

The News On Sunday

Ideally speaking, an alliance between the forces representing rural and urban Sindh makes sense. But when politics is driven more by narrow self- or party-interest, right choices are seldom made.

For the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), it is the proverbial situation of being caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. If this urban-based party tags itself again with the Pakistan Peoples’ Party- (PPP) led government at the Sindh provincial level, its popular politics is doomed. And if it doesn’t, the party leadership and its rank-and-file should get ready to brace for rougher times ahead against the backdrop of unsympathetic security institutions and equally militant and brutal political rivals, who crave to strengthen or expand their turfs in the country’s financial and industrial capital of Karachi.

The MQM’s dilemma is evident the way its leadership has been navigating the minefield of Pakistani politics since the May 11, 2013 general elections. On one hand, it is trying to flirt with the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) at the centre, albeit an apparent cold shoulder from the new rulers. On the other, it is maintaining an ambiguous stance about the future relations with the PPP, which is keen to take the MQM leaders on another ‘joy-ride,’ that brought overwhelming criticism and hardly any accolades in their last stint together.

Amidst all this, the party’s supreme leader Altaf Hussain is keeping his supporters and followers on tenterhooks by bringing massive organisational changes and all the hard-talk against political adversaries, bad eggs within the MQM and some ominous predictions about Pakistan’s future.

Yes, the MQM’s politics is not for a faint-hearted person. The dynamics of its internal organisational politics are complex, yet simply clear in which straying away from ‘party-line’ or any lack of faith on its self-exiled founder has a high price. On the external level, the party is still seen with deep suspicion and as an unwanted intruder in the country’s corridors of power. Despite efforts and initiatives of awarding party tickets to non-Urdu-speaking candidates from its strongholds, the MQM continues to suffer from this ‘image problem’ and is largely seen as an ethnic-based party, accused by rivals of introducing the politics of bodies stuffed in gunny sacks, torture and extortion in Karachi.

The MQM, on its part, blames the establishment and the traditional political forces of launching successive operations against it, which killed thousands of its committed workers, supporters and leaders in more than two decades.

“Even now the MQM remains the target of an unannounced operation,” said Nasir Jamal, a deputy convener of the MQM’s Coordination Committee. “Our workers are being killed, tortured and kidnapped systematically by the law enforcement agencies… there have even been cases of forced disappearances — similar to Balochistan.”

The MQM says that since May 1, at least 52 of its workers have been killed, while another six remains missing. If the number of MQM’s deaths is counted from January 1, it would come to a staggering 168 as on June 26. The expanding list of MQM victims includes its Sindh Assembly lawmaker Sajid Qureshi and his son, who were gunned down by assailants outside a Karachi mosque on June 21 and many other important local leaders. Under these circumstances, making a choice to rejoin the provincial government indeed remains a tough call.

The results of the last elections also triggered some serious soul searching within the MQM, which is the only party belonging to the former ruling coalition, that by-and-large maintained its electoral turf. The elections witnessed the much discounted Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) candidates getting substantial number of votes in the MQM-dominated areas. The number of MQM’s popular votes declined by around two percent amidst allegations of rigging at a number of polling stations.

Jamal, the MQM’s young deputy convener, alleviated to this position in the recent organisational shake-up, admits that there is a lot of resentment among the party’s supporters about the five-year performance of the previous coalition government.

The PPP managed to keep the MQM on its side despite long patches of strained relationship largely by the sweet-talk of former interior minister Rehman Malik, who was the point person of President Asif Ali Zardari in managing Altaf Hussain and his team. Practically the PPP managed to keep the MQM on its side by offering some crumbs of power and concessions, but without yielding to its key demand of giving urban Sindh the local bodies system. There were talks and promises, and promises and talks, but the end result was that the term ended without the local bodies’ elections. The insult to injury was when the PPP provincial lawmakers scrapped the Sindh Local Bodies system only a few days before the end of their tenure after the MQM pulled out of the government.

The MQM was also kept at a receiving end in Karachi the way a section of the PPP, led by former provincial home minister Zulfikar Mirza —  a close friend of Zardari —  propped up the Lyari Aman Committee that has been blamed for most street crimes, kidnappings for ransom cases and extortion in the commercial and business hubs of the city.

A senior PPP leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that supporting criminals and gangsters had never been in party’s creed. But a section of the provincial leadership spearheaded by Mirza thought that it remains the best way to contain the MQM and its militancy and its ever expanding demands. “This flawed approach resulted in establishing the Aman Committee’s control in the PPP stronghold of Lyari, where we were forced to award tickets over the dictates of the ring leaders of this committee.”

However, despite some internal criticism, the third term of Qaim Ali Shah as chief minister started with Lyari’s visit where he attended a reception organised by the controversial committee, which was symbolically banned by his government to appease the MQM in his second stint in power.

This indeed remains a worrying start of the PPP’s third term in Sindh —  at least for the people of Karachi in general and traders, businesspeople and industrialists in particular, who continue to suffer from gangs operating from Lyari —  one of the many North Waziristans of this teeming city where writ of the state hardly exists.

The MQM hardly sees any change in the PPP’s stance on the two key issues which matters the most for Karachi — the poor law and order and the local bodies system.

“We cannot deliver anything to our electorate without the local bodies,” Jamal says. “The deteriorating law and order, killings and the rampant street crimes remain the second issue which hurts us the most.”

In the recent meeting with the PPP stalwarts, the MQM raised these two key issues on which the PPP has always been long on promises and short of actions.

In an attempt to gauge the public mood and sentiment, which is already known to the party leadership, it conducted a referendum to gather views from workers and sympathisers whether to join the provincial government. Although the official results of the referendum have been withheld in the wake of the killing of party’s provincial law maker Sajid Qureshi, the party sources say that the overwhelming response remained a firm ‘no’ to this question.

Ideally speaking, an alliance between the forces representing rural and urban Sindh makes sense. But when politics is driven more by narrow self- or party-interest, right choices are seldom made.

The MQM, which remained in power for more than a decade, seems to make the difficult choice of staying in the opposition as the general mood of its supporters’ favours this option — at least for now. This means not just difficult times ahead for the MQM, but also for this already traumatised city where crime and politics walks hand-in-hand and criminals and mafias rule.