A silent campaign: Leaflets criticising Imran Khan emerge in North Karachi

The pamphlets seem to indicate the political threat posed by PTI to the city’s parties.

KARACHI:

With the surge in popularity of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), a new, silent campaign against the party has made its way to Karachi on the eve of the NA-246 by-elections.

Savagely criticising PTI chief Imran Khan, leaflets were anonymously distributed across North Karachi late on Saturday night. The message on the pamphlets seemed a clear indicator of the major political threat that Khan and his party have become to the city’s political parties.



The support for PTI became evident in North Karachi, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) stronghold which forms much of the constituency of NA-245, in the general elections held in 2013. Without campaigning in the area, PTI candidate Muhammad Riaz Haider still managed to garner 54,937 votes as he lost to MQM’s Rehan Hashmi.

“Khan is calling you [the residents of Karachi] living corpses. Are the people of Karachi dead?” asks the leaflet, referring to a recent speech by the PTI chief. It also accused him of being an ‘ally’ to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). “Why does he not refer to the TTP as living corpses?”

Addressing Khan, it alleged that Khan was a mere puppet, entertaining the entire country on the orders of others.

“These leaflets were distributed while I was standing on the rooftop of my house,” a resident of the area told The Express Tribune on the condition of anonymity. “Since the barriers have been removed in the area, the people here prefer to stay inside out of fear, leaving the streets deserted. However, a few men were going around leaving the pamphlets in the houses.” He claimed that he recognised one of the men as an MQM supporter.

MQM MNA Hashmi, however, when contacted by The Express Tribune, categorically denied the party’s involvement. “PTI is our political rival but we do not use such tactics against our rivals,” he declared. “Whatever the MQM does, it does openly.” The party leader was also curious to see the leaflet.

On the other hand, Imran Ismail, PTI’s expected nominee for the NA-246 by-elections, said that only a little research would lend credence to the notion that the pamphlet was distributed by the MQM. “The couplet mentioned at the beginning of the leaflet has often been used by MQM leaders such as Faisal Subzwari in their speeches.”

He added that the MQM was under pressure. “They are afraid because, for the first time, they are being challenged by someone else in their constituency,” he claimed, further clarifying that Khan never called Karachi’s residents ‘living corpses’. “What he meant was that with the way they are coerced into listening to MQM chief Altaf Hussain’s speeches, it seems as if they need someone to awaken them.”

Published in The Express Tribune, March 30^th, 2015.