The revival of the MMA

Just because MMA is a spent force does not mean we should forget the damage it heaped when it was in power.

The announcement by Maulana Fazlur Rehman that he is reviving the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), a coalition of religious parties, in the run-up to the next general elections, no longer inspires the kind of fear in the hearts of moderate political parties as it once did. This time around, the MMA does not include the Jamaat-e-Islami or the JUI-S, making it little more than an extension of Fazlur Rehman’s JUI-F. The MMA has also been overtaken by time and events. Where once it was the fearsome coalition of extreme religious political parties united by a common agenda of furthering Islamisation in Pakistan and promoting anti-West views, the mantle has now been taken up by the Difa-e-Pakistan Council, which has all the extremism and street power of the MMA but multiplied many times over.

Just because the MMA is a spent force does not mean we should forget the damage it heaped on the country when it was in power. After the 2002 elections, when it formed a government in then NWFP, it unleashed a campaign of fear and intimidation. Billboards with human faces were torn down, CD shops were ransacked and artists no longer had the means to earn a living. The MMA also rammed through the Hasba bill in the provincial assembly, which would have made the Talibanisation of the province complete, but thanks to the intervention of the Supreme Court, this did not happen. Extremists were given the space to plan and execute terrorist attacks.

So hellish had the province become under the MMA that it was handed a resounding defeat in the 2008 elections. Its promises of tackling poverty proved hollow and its Islamic agenda had no takers. This time around, the MMA should not be able to get more than a few seats unless it has the backing of the establishment, as it did in 2002. Then, we could end up with a nightmare scenario where all the extreme right-wing parties band together to assume power.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 20^th, 2012.