File photo of MQM leader Farooq Sattar. PHOTO: PID/FILE
KARACHI: The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) on Tuesday announced that the party has issued application forms for the middle-class and poor people of Pakistan, who want to contest in the upcoming elections from national or provincial assembly seats.
Addressing a press conference in Karachi, MQM leader Farooq Sattar said, “Political and religious parties of the country sell their election tickets for millions to selfish candidates, who don’t even show their faces in their constituencies after they get elected.”
He said that poor and middle-class people, who want to serve their people, never get a chance to contest in the elections because they don’t have enough money to buy tickets.
“However, MQM has always supported poor and middle-class people, who are literate and talented. Therefore, the MQM has issued nomination forms for such people, who want to represent the people of Pakistan, for free, irrespective of their religion, caste and ethnicity.”
He further added that the forms would be available at the election cell of MQM headquarters, Nine Zero (90) and other zonal and district offices. The form, he said, will also be available on their website www.mqm.org.
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@Truth From Toronto: This is what MQM is doing for years but we as PTI supporters or any other party supporter reserve a biased opinion Please dont be loyal to Parties flags be loyal to Pakistan.
mqm this news is very good but originally act this news and search areas and collect in these areas some one young generation and forward assembly .thanks
Way to go !!! Trend setter MQM always takes the lead..
On March 2, 2013, a botched-up kidnapping attempt took place at an upscale shopping mall in Karachi. The crime was committed by the son of an influential person with a licensed weapon, using a vehicle with a fake government number-plate. It does not require counterterrorism experts to determine the key ingredients that come together to create a typical Pakistani crime scene – weapons, vehicles and influential people. Individually, and often collectively, they define the lawless and violent reality of today’s Pakistan.
Though it came late in the day, there now appears a growing realisation that living with the barbarity of 15 persons being killed every day and 50 on weekends need not be a permanent feature of our existence. But crime is a lucrative business, which can neither be wished away nor be expected to disappear voluntarily. The solution lies in seeking an end to the three crucial components that create, facilitate or promote crime and violence in Pakistan. These are: (a) weapons – licensed or otherwise; (b) vehicles – smuggled, unregistered or carrying fake number-plates; and (c) the pampered, violent and lawless ruling elite.
Let us begin by understanding the role of vehicles as a medium for conducting and promoting violence. On Friday November 23, 2012, the FBR chairman revealed the mind-boggling figures of 2.3 million non-duty-paid smuggled vehicles on the roads of Pakistan – of which about 450,000 luxury vehicles had been registered through forged documents. This amounts to direct financial violence (evasion of duties and taxes) of some 900 billion rupees.
Smuggling and fraud on such a scale can simply not happen without the active collusion and patronage of many (ir)responsible state institutions. Decent and law-abiding citizens do not use smuggled vehicles, nor get them registered on forged documents. Thus, it is safe to assume that the majority of these vehicles are now owned by criminals (mostly people with influence and power) and are used for criminal activities.
A recent study carried out in Karachi with a sample of 430 vehicles carrying green number-plates (meant exclusively for government use) revealed that 70 percent of the vehicles had fake or illegal number plates. The survey was based on 3,468 vehicles (GS and GSA number-plates only) purchased by the Sindh government in the last six years. Twenty-eight percent of the vehicles were found to be carrying fake GS or GSA number-plates – not included in the database held by the Excise and Taxation Department. Another 26 percent of the vehicles were disguised as government vehicles with their owners illegally displaying their registration numbers on green-background plates. Nine percent carried fancy number-plates, while seven percent carried no number-plates at all.
There are thus thousands of unregistered vehicles with spurious, fake or missing number-plates that move around unchecked on the streets of Karachi. Vehicles of this category are ones most often employed in crime and kidnapping, for they leave behind no clues of their origin or ownership and the police is too incompetent and scared to check them.
With an estimated eight million licensed and 12 million unlicensed guns in the hands of people not known for their reverence for law, there can be little reason for peace and tranquillity to show up voluntarily. For years the government itself pioneered the spread of violence and militancy – issuing 69,000 licences for prohibited-bore weapons to some 300 parliamentarians in the last five years. The federal government issued 1.2 million gun licences, while the Sindh government made a matching contribution by distributing 400,000 licences in the last five years. Have all these weapons made citizens’ lives any safer? Surely there is enough data to suggest otherwise.
Guns are designed to perform just one function. To expect them to behave differently is not reasonable. A society without guns will gradually learn to solve its conflicts with words instead of bullets. It would therefore be best to begin by striking down the Arms Ordinance – a law exclusively aimed at promoting violence and facilitate a particular class to acquire exclusive rights to kill.
Vulnerable to gross misuse, the Arms Ordinance is a convoluted and violence-friendly instrument that enables even people like Malik Ishaq, the founder of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi to obtain 11 prohibited-bore-weapons licences. This madness can be ended only when no citizen – regardless of his rank or status, whether he is rich or poor, religious or secular – is allowed to possess, carry or display any weapon of any bore – licensed or otherwise. Providing security is the responsibility of the state, and it must not be sublet to private armies or individuals.
Pakistan can rapidly transform itself into a peaceful and progressive society if it can focus on breaking two important links in this chain of violence: (a) across-the-board deweaponisation and (b) creating an effective system to control, register, trace and check every vehicle. Needless to say, that this will not happen without a massive and sustained people’s movement.
The writer is a management systems consultant and a freelance writer on social issues.
@ Truth from Toronto....oh please, spare us, I support IK but please MQM has been bringing people from middle and lower middle class long before Imran Khan even thouught name of his party. So keep it for PML(N), PPP and ANP etc. Whether you hate MQM or like MQM the fact is some of their MPAs dont have cars and come to assebly in scooters, but you would not know since media don't like talking about such people.
Now this is what Pakistan needs, give power to the regular Joe's.... Well done MQM.
Ahem wait isn't that what PTI is doing?!