PTI, MQM show immaturity by going to courts
Old habits die hard – even in the so-called ‘new’ political parties. Such is what the decision by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) to take each other to the courts shows. In what observers have called a continuity of the politics of the 1990s, the two political parties have taken the dispute that started with allegations of rigging in NA-250 in the General Elections 2013 and involved the murder of a senior PTI member the night before the re-polling. The dispute began when PTI workers took to the Teen Talwar in Karachi against alleged rigging by the MQM. The response of the MQM head Altaf Hussain in a telephone speech from his London home was to say, “My workers can make the Teen Talwar (Three Swords) come live.” The PTI was able to mobilize its tech-savvy support base and thousands of phone calls were made to the British Metropolitan Police reporting the “inflammatory speeches” by the “British citizen.”
Forced to play its hand, the Met raided the MQM chief’s home in London over the murder of senior MQM leader Imran Farooq and the BBC followed up with a special report on the activities and allegations of Altaf Hussain. With the MQM already cornered, the PTI chairman Imran Khan speaking from London, put the murder of PTI leader Zahra Shahid squarely on the allegedly “provocative speeches” by Altaf Hussain. The MQM responded first by questioning the credentials of Khan on terror, calling him a “Taliban sympathizer” and then choosing to file Rs5 billion defamation suit against the PTI chief in the Sindh High Court. The MQM said it had earlier sent a legal notice to Khan and was filing a case since he did not respond. Imran Khan had tweeted on May 18, the day of Shahid’s murder, that “I hold Altaf Hussain directly responsible for the murder as he had openly threatened PTI workers and leaders through public broadcasts.”
The response of the PTI has been tit-for-tat as it responded by saying it shall file a Rs10 billion libel against the MQM, apparently upping the stakes in what Khan could call a “legal cricket match.” Thankfully the suit has yet to be filed and the decision rests with Khan when he eventually returns from London. What defamation has the MQM undertaken shall then be revealed. Nonetheless, it is a sad state of affairs. The two parties have returned to the courts, instead of solving the issue politically. It is part of the process of political parties yield their turf to the judiciary. The case is unnecessary. The focus should be on the investigation of Zahra’s murder. In the meanwhile, both political parties should avoid slandering each other until the investigation comes up with a lead.