Regaining political space: Vote bank still intact, asserts MQM-Pakistan

Farooq Sattar says accountability of Peoples Party has begun

KARACHI: In an apparent move signifying that Muttahida Qaumi Movement (Pakistan) has gotten back the political space it has been demanding since August 22, its convener Dr Farooq Sattar said that the party’s urban vote bank in the province was intact.

Addressing a gathering of party workers at Numaish Chowrangi, Dr Sattar said that the accountability of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) had begun and in the upcoming general election it will be defeated.

Comfortably addressing the crowd, the head of the MQM-Pakistan and other leaders asserted that the party, despite recent splintering, had not lost any of its voters.



Dr Sattar’s confident demeanour during the rally, staged between Liaquatabad and Numaish Chowrangi, gave credence to reports suggesting a possible merger of various factions of the party, including Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP).

All speakers, however, avoided criticising either PSP chairperson Mustafa Kamal or chief of the Muhajir Qaumi Movement-Haqiqi Afaq Ahmed. Instead they lashed out at the PPP and MQM-London.

Advising his party workers to show magnanimity and welcome rivals with warm gestures, he said, “We need to learn from our mistakes. We must never be proud or arrogant like we did in the past.”

Announcing to recreate the MQM of 1986, Dr Farooq Sattar said: “We have denounced the politics of violence.”

Manipulators, he said, had sought to destroy Karachi, but people had chosen to join MQM-P, thwarting the possibility of a clash. He was referring to the rally and the support extended by his party’s political rivals, including MQM-H and PSP.

MQM’s veteran leader and deputy convener Amir Khan warned that if the population of Urdu-speaking community was shown less than their actual numbers in the census, MQM-P would launch such a fierce protest that the manipulators would be left with no option but to escape.

He remarked that if the province’s urban population was not given its due rights, the campaign for a separate province would become inevitable.



According to him, unjust practices would also force the people of rural areas to rise up for their rights.

“The Sindh Assembly merely represents the feudal class and not the entire province,” he said, adding that if the PPP did not mend its ways, they would be forced to stage a protest right outside the provincial assembly.

MQM-P, he said, had raised the issue of 160 missing party workers in the Sindh Assembly, but the government remained oblivious, but when three people close to Asif Ali Zardari went missing, they raised such a hue and cry.

“We want to make this city liveable, besides enabling our workers, who are away from their homes, to come back,” he said.

Taking a jibe at leaders of MQM-London, who asserted that the rally would be a ‘flop show’, he said that the rally itself was a slap on their faces.



“We will not allow our vote bank to be divided.”

Karachi Mayor Waseem Akhtar said that MQM-Pakistan wanted to move ahead, by burying the bitterness of the past for the betterment of this city in particular and the entire province in general.

MQM-Pakistan’s deputy convener Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui and leader of the opposition in the Sindh Assembly Khawaja Izharul Hassan also addressed the rally.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 24^th, 2017.