Apparently, the surprise emergence of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) as a force to be reckoned with in Karachi has threatened the dominance of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), forcing its leadership to reorganise the party structure.
The Imran Khan-led PTI, which has emerged as the second largest national party, also managed to bag a considerable number of votes in Karachi, which has been the stronghold of the MQM since the last two decades.
The PTI won one National Assembly seat and three provincial assembly seats, bagging a total of 634,483 votes from all 20 NA constituencies of the commercial hub of the country.
After the MQM, which bagged 1,949,075 votes, the PTI is the second largest party in Karachi by getting over 600,000 votes. According to the election results, the PTI received almost 28 percent of the total votes in Karachi and MQM got 56 percent votes.
Interestingly, the PPP, which shared coalition government in Sindh for five years, could only manage to get 299,109 votes.
PTI leaders have been alleging the MQM of snatching PTI’s mandate in Karachi, a charge the MQM denied.
PTI Central Information Secretary Dr Shireen Mizari on Friday told Pakistan Today that the PTI had a large vote bank in Karachi, but its mandate had been stolen. “We expected to win over 10 seats. But, our mandate was stolen in Karachi. I hope the PTI will get more number of seats in the next elections. Now the people of Karachi are breaking the shackles of fear.” She said the people voted for the PTI, because they wanted to end the culture of violence.
Another PTI leader, Dr Waseem Shahzad said it was the PTI’s vote bank that had forced the MQM to reorganise its party structure in Karachi. “Now, the MQM is after the land mafia, extortionists and drug mafia,” he said, adding that in May 11 polls, the PTI had given a new vision and political awareness to the people of Karachi.
Senior MQM leader Wasay Jalil said Karachi was MQM’s stronghold. He said during the last elections, an alliance of over 10 right-wing parties, led by the PTI, had contested against the MQM, but even then MQM had clinched all seats. Jalil said the JI, not the PTI, was the real opposition party in Karachi.
The MQM leader said the PTI had managed to bad votes because the Jihad boycotted the elections, otherwise it had no standing in Karachi.
To a query, he said reorganising party structure after every election was the MQM’s tradition.
“Reorganising the party has nothing to do with the PTI… rather we decided it well before the elections that after the polls we will go for reorganising.”
He said the allegations of rigging against the MQM were baseless and shameful.