Farooq Sattar offers olive branch to Bahadurabad faction

ECP to hear rival faction's petition for his removal as party head tomorrow

HYDERABAD: Head of the PIB Colony faction of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) - Pakistan Dr Farooq Sattar appeared to be burying the hatchet with the party's Bahadurabad faction two days before the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) is set to hear the claims of the two sides over the party's leadership.

At a press conference on Sunday in Hyderabad, Dr Sattar expressed his hope of finding an amicable solution to the split, which is being considered the second biggest blow to the party after it parted ways with its founding leader Altaf Hussain in August, 2016.

"The people who support us want this process [of division] to stop. They want the party to become united and strong as it used to be in the past," Dr Sattar said, describing the fissures as a test for MQM-Pakistan's leaders to show their abilities in resolving disagreements. "It's the beauty of democracy that the two sides can work together even after developing differences," he remarked.

Last Wednesday, the ECP adjourned a hearing of the MQM-Pakistan Bahadurabad faction's petition requesting the removal of Dr Sattar from the party convener's post. The hearing will resume tomorrow (Tuesday). However, Dr Sattar was hopeful of a positive outcome. "The 2018 general elections are in the offing. The Muhajir community will have to remain united," he said. He reiterated that his party took the plunge of removing Altaf from the leadership on August 23, 2016 to save the MQM and its 37-year-long political struggle.



The MQM-Pakistan leader also shared his apprehensions regarding the delimitation of constituencies in urban Sindh for the 2018 general elections. He claimed that some National Assembly constituencies in Karachi had a population of 900,000 people, whereas, others had 600,000 against the ECP's standard of 785,135 people. "We will protest against this at all levels and will also mobilise the people. We will challenge the delimitation in the ECP and, if required, in the court as well."

Dr Sattar said his party promptly raised objections to the population census in 2017 and filed a petition against its results in the Supreme Court. He appealed to the chief justice of Pakistan to hear their case, arguing that the urban population in Sindh was being shown as less than the rural population under a conspiracy to deny the right of political representation to the people of urban Sindh.

He lamented that his advice of boycotting the Senate elections was not accepted and MQM-Pakistan's participation ended up giving three additional seats to the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). He censured the province's ruling party for neglecting urban Sindh.

MQM-Pakistan did not want to discriminate between the Urdu and Sindhi speaking residents of Sindh, Dr Sattar claimed. "The PPP's conspiracies are defeating our efforts for harmony," he said, warning that the PPP will be hoisted by its own petard at the hands of racial discrimination.



Kamran Tessori, an MQM-Pakistan PIB faction leader who has been cited as a major reason for the rift in the party, also accompanied Dr Sattar on his first visit to Hyderabad after the schism. Hyderabad has emerged as a stronghold of the Dr Sattar-led faction with all four party MPAs from the city, one of the two MNAs, and the mayor and deputy mayor of the Hyderabad Municipal Corporation supporting him.