A shotgun marriage gone sour
The MQM vote bank remained confined to urban Sindh. It only made half-hearted attempts to organise on a national level or appeal to the non-Muhajir vote
Ironically our war gamers have not learnt from their past failures. If it were possible to foist political parties from above, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman would have been politically eliminated and Bangladesh would never have been created
The shotgun marriage between the Muttahida Qaumi Movement –Pakistan (MQM-P) and Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) ended even before it was consummated. The short-lived alliance ostensibly brokered on the behest of the ubiquitous establishment died its premature death basically thanks to its own internal contradictions.
A tearful MQM-P chief Farooq Sattar announced the demise of the stillborn alliance on Thursday evening. Only a day earlier Sattar and PSP chief Mustafa Kamal — much to everyone’s surprise — had announced the marriage with much fanfare.
Although Farooq Sattar had merely announced an alliance with the PSP, Mustafa Kamal much to the chagrin of the MQM-P rank and file insisted that it was a merger. According to him the new party under a new name, manifesto and election symbol will contest the upcoming general elections.
This sounded too good to be true. How could the MQM forego its Muhajir identity with a stroke of a pen?
The MQM was originally formed as Muhajir Qaumi Movement. However, its supremo Altaf Hussain in 1997 cleverly removed the name Muhajir and replaced it with Muttahida, the acronym ‘MQM’ remaining the same.
The MQM vote bank remained confined to urban Sindh. It only made half-hearted attempts to organise on a national level or appeal to the non-Muhajir vote.
That is why it was all the more surprising that the MQM-P had finally decided to shed its ethnic identity and delve in national politics. The PSP chief however continues to claim to the contrary.
According to him PSP believes in national politics and the purpose behind the alliance was precisely to achieve that. If Farooq Sattar was sincere in this endeavour he was soon to be surprised by the extremely adverse reaction to this move.
It was obvious that the Rabita (coordination) Committee had no stomach for such a marriage. In a hurriedly called meeting, sans Dr Sattar, it unanimously rejected the whole idea.
Like another episode of an Indian soap opera late Thursday night a tearful Sattar, being totally isolated in his own party, in a long-winded press conference announced his resignation and, moreover, that he was quitting politics altogether.
However, in yet another episode of the late-night drama Sattar flanked by his mother and erstwhile estranged leader Amir Khan announced that he was back on the pleading of his mother.
It seems that the MQM-P is unable to cut its umbilical cords from the politics of its London based founder. Playing the victimhood of the Muhajirs card remains its mantra.
Farooq Sattar has rightly challenged his nemesis PSP to eek out a single seat outside urban Sindh, to the extent that if it does he will quit politics. The MQM-P is spot on. The PSP is also essentially a Muhajir outfit under a different label.
The MQM-P chief has also questioned the source of income of Mustafa Kamal. How could he afford a palatial house and bulletproof vehicles whereas he was still living in the same house since 1969, he asked in the presser.
Obviously, he is repeating the commonly held perception that the PSP had been created and foisted by the powers that be to break the back of the MQM-P. A little more than a year ago the longest serving governor of Sindh Ishratul Ibad told me that the PSP has been planted in a flowerpot. Hence it will never take roots.
The erstwhile MQM stalwart was removed a few months later and now lives in permanent exile in Dubai. He is not on good terms with the supremo.
The question that begs an answer is after all what prompted the MQM-P and PSP to suddenly close ranks? Farooq Sattar has vehemently denied Mustafa Kamal’s claims that behind the scenes talks to merge were going on for the past six months.
According to some media reports quoting ‘close sources’ to Sattar he faced tremendous pressure from certain quarters at a meeting held at a DHA Karachi safe house on Tuesday night. He was told to enter into an alliance with the PSP subsequently dissolving the MQM-P.
The ‘source’ quoted in the report is probably the MQM-P chief himself who probably does not want to be named for obvious reasons. According to the same report, he was warned that either he did what he had been told to do or be ready to face arrest. He was also reportedly threatened that if he refused to comply the party would be declared a banned outfit.
Even if there is a kernel of truth in the report carried by a reputed daily of the country, it speaks volumes about the state of politics in the Islamic Republic. Why don’t the so-called political engineers do the job they are mandated for and leave politics to the politicians?
If the reports about ‘certain quarters’ are also true, flogging MQM’s dead horse down south suggests a Musharraf-era style reorganisation of religious centre-right parties in KP and Balochistan might also be on the cards. Are we, then, moving in the same direction as in the years of the dictatorship?
As they say: the more things change the more they remain the same. Ironically the MQM was created under the aegis of the war gamers of General Zia-ul-Haq in 1984 with Altaf Hussain as its head. Ostensibly at the time its purpose was to act as a counter weight to the PPP and Jamaat-e-Islami. It is another matter that the latter was never a threat in urban Sindh to anybody.
But in the process, such a hydra headed monster was created that devoured the peace of Karachi. Altaf Hussain’s writ became so large that on his orders anybody could be eliminated and urban Sindh shut down on his whims.
Only four years ago under the PML-N government and the provincial government, law-enforcing agencies including the rangers were provided the enabling environment to curb this menace.
Perhaps the creation of PSP and the MQM split was part of this political engineering? But, unfortunately, the PSP never gained the traction initially expected from it.
So far as the MQM-P is concerned, despite splitting from London it is not entirely trusted. That is why Farooq Sattar notwithstanding his Pakistan based politics keeps on complaining that ‘humain dewaar sey lagaya ja raha hai’ (we are being pushed to the wall). Perhaps the establishment wants a unified Muhajir vote under a new nomenclature as a counter weight to PPP’s ingress in urban Sindh?
Ironically our war gamers have not learnt from their past failures. If it were possible to foist political parties from above, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman would have been politically eliminated and Bangladesh would never have been created.
More recently, Musharraf failed to create a sustainable king’s party despite successfully splitting the PPP and PML-N. How NAB was created and used to change loyalties by Musharraf has been disclosed in the recently released Paradise Papers. According to the leaks NAB had engaged an offshore company for tracking down assets of more than 200 politicians, generals and bureaucrats.
Be that as it may, the correct course would be that if the intelligence agencies have any concrete evidence of the MQM-P stalwarts engaging in illegal activities in cahoots with MQM-London a reference should be filed against them in the courts, rather than attempting to dry clean them through a spurious merger.
