Breakaway faction: Two more MQM stalwarts jump ship

Iftikhar Alam and Waseem Aftab join Mustafa Kamal’s unnamed party

KARACHI: Two more disgruntled leaders of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) joined the Mustafa Kamal-led unnamed breakaway faction on Thursday.

Iftikhar Alam, the MQM’s provincial lawmaker from its traditional stronghold of Azizabad, and Waseem Aftab, a former Rabita Committee member who also once headed the powerful Karachi Tanzeemi Committee, announced they were parting ways with the MQM and joining Kamal and company at a news conference

Aftab, who had distanced himself from the party in 2013, spoke to the media first in the press talk held at Kamal’s residence-cum-headquarters in Defence.

“Fifteen thousand people have died and thousands have been left disabled. Thousands are living the life of exile. Lots of them have lost their childhood, daughters have become widows. Why has this all happened?” questioned Aftab.

He claimed only when he became a member the MQM Rabita Committee and the core committee did he come to know about  the 'truth and lies' about the party and where this 'film' was going. He also hit out at the MQM’s relationship with the PPP, and said that neither could it become its enemy nor its friend.

“We didn’t get any important ministries and whichever ones we had, we lost,” he lamented, referring to the frequent U-turns of the MQM in joining the government and then leaving it during the previous government.

Without taking Altaf Hussain’s name, Aftab said the party chief used workers as 'toilet paper'. “He only remembers them when he wants to do politics with their corpses.”

Alam, meanwhile, announced his resignation from the PS-106 of Azizabad. He also lamented how the families of the 'martyred' workers and those missing were suffering owing to the neglect of Altaf.

“Money is spent on events to make Altaf Hussain laugh and to put him in a good mood. Why can’t this money be spent on the families of the slain workers?”

Three MQM leaders have jumped ship since Kamal and Anis Kaimkhani’s dramatic entry as a separate political force in Karachi a week ago. Kamal’s party now has five members, including two sitting MPAs Alam and Dr Sagheer Ahmed, who joined them earlier this week.

MQM reaction

In a press statement, the MQM once again claimed those behind the conspiracy to divide the party were now forcing its parliamentarians to change loyalties by blackmailing them.

“These parliamentarians are being threatened with false cases or their loyalties are being bought by different ways,"  the statement read.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 11^th, 2016.