Desertion of legislators exposes party’s fragile unity
The MQM (P), often regarded as a thin veneer covering the wicked old Altaf Hussain controlled namesake party, stands at a watershed in its more than three decades journey over Pakistan’s political landscape. Once feared more than accepted, with a military – type enforcement wing, it struck terror in the hearts of political rivals and others at the receiving end of its tender mercies, for whatever reason, and the metropolis of Karachi could be snapped shut with one shake of the pudgy little finger of the increasingly eccentric party founder in London. But what a dramatic sea change the party has witnessed in the last couple of years, and today it represents only ‘poor remains’ of the once mightiest force in Karachi.
The party’s aura of invincibility was first shaken by the PTI in the 2013 elections, when it snatched a sizeable number of MQM votes from many Karachi constituencies, despite winning only one National Assembly seat at the ethnic party’s expense. It was however the political exclusion of the MQM chief, and the out of the blue formation of the Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) that started the process of disintegration of the once powerful political force, which has recently assumed alarming proportions.
Last week saw nine party legislators change their de facto allegiance, seven in favour of the PSP, one for the PPP with one still undecided and playing the political musical chairs game, with the MQM accusing the federal government of ‘forcing them to switch loyalties’, and threatening all manner of retaliation, from legal, parliamentary and street protests to resignation from Assemblies as a last resort. To run salt in the wounds came the surprise announcement of Karachi Deputy Mayor Arshad Vohra’s PSP flight, a change he attributed to the lack of vision in the MQM leadership, while the latter termed it an escape from criminal cases, for which indeed there are unsavoury precedents. The MQM needs to act decisively and fast concerning these desertions otherwise the vacuum will be filled by other political forces inimical to it. Nature abhors a vacuum.
