At odds with the constitution
The Karachi problem is not a simple one. Aside from a number of criminal activities going on in the city – extortion, gang wars, kidnappings, target killings, sectarianism – politicking is also part of what ails the city. There are no-go areas in the megapolis to which even the law enforcement agencies have no access. Political parties have militant wings. The way the MQM lays exclusive claim to be the only representative of the 20 million multi-ethnic population of the city is what makes it hard to believe that it is simply a matter of maintaining law and order.
Besides the current police and Rangers operation going on in the city, the government needs a political solution for Karachi as well. And what Mehmood Achakzai suggested in the National Assembly the other day does have a good ring about it. If Karachi is given a Lebanon treatment, as Achakzai proposed, the megacity could have a much better political representation of all of its ethnicities. At present, the financial hub of Pakistan is represented almost entirely by the MQM, an Urdu-speaking ethnicity which constitutes between 60-70 percent out of 20 million, as Achakzai has stated. There are Sindhis, Punjabis, Balochis and Pahtuns all living there and not in negligible numbers. They make up between 30-40 percent of the city’s populace and have every right to be represented as they want. These figures, along with some split in the Mohajir vote going to the Jamaat-e-Islami and the PTI, make the MQM’s claim of being the only representative party of the city somewhat harder to accept. Unless a vast majority of the minority ethnicities also vote for the MQM, a highly unlikely probability, and which the MQM cannot prove, it needs to stop presenting itself as exclusive representative of the city. It is a travesty of democracy to exclude minorities or make an attempt to steamroll them.
It definitely does not make sense as to why the MQM alone should represent them but here is also where things get a bit tricky. The constitution and other relevant laws allow the MQM to maintain its exclusivity over the city and put Achakzai’s solution at odds with the letter and spirit of the constitution. However, to remove complaints of other major ethnic groups, the government should conduct the long overdue census, which would bring to fore where each ethnicity stands at in the city, statistics wise. The exercise should though be transparent and be seen and accepted as genuine. The government also needs to undo the gerrymandering done in the Musharraf regime which resulted in tilting the odds in MQM’s favour. But most of all the government needs to put an end to militant wings of political parties, and to the criminal gangs that support various parties and are involved in electoral malpractices and other criminal activities.