A tolerant voice silenced

The terrorists have claimed the life of another gentleman who always added grace and sanity to an otherwise degenerating political culture of Karachi. Syed Ali Raza Abidi was targeted and killed outside his DHA residence on Tuesday night. Abidi’s assassination came soon after the killing of two PSP workers in the city that has seen a relative calm of more than two years following the Rangers-led operation against miscreants and criminals. While there is no clue yet to the whys and the wherefores of the incident, it surely is the job of the antagonistic hidden hands that know how a riotous Karachi could affect the progress of Pakistan.

Abidi’s association with the MQM goes back to 1988 when he was a college student. But politics took a pause for him when he went to the United States to pursue higher studies. Coming back to Pakistan in 1998, he joined the family business of seafood processing and established a restaurant, now a famous eatery in the city. But Abidi seems to have inherited a commitment to the MQM ideology from his father, Syed Ikhlaq Hussain Abidi, who was also a member of the National Assembly. That was why, perhaps, he could not stay away from the MQM and rejoined politics. He was later elected to the National Assembly on the party’s ticket in 2013.

Abidi’s dissatisfaction with MQM affairs grew after a 2015 crackdown on the party that led to an internal power struggle and groupings. When Farooq Sattar decided to do away with the MQM identity in a short-lived alliance with the PSP in Nov 2017, Abidi was left more frustrated and decided to quit his NA seat, declaring that it was not what he stood for all those years. Times changed and on July 25, he contested NA election on the party’s ticket, but lost to Imran Khan. Abidi was disgruntled when the party refused to oblige him with a ticket to contest by-election on the same seat vacated by Imran Khan. It was then that he decided to resign from the MQM’s basic membership, bringing an end to his idealism and romanticism with the party he had cherished since his college days. It is unfortunate to see a gentle and tolerant voice of Karachi’s politics being silenced so brutally.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 27^th, 2018.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.