Prestigious contests: All eyes on the hot seats

NA-250 is an unpredictable seat in Karachi.

SUKKUR/ HYDERABAD/ KARACHI:

When the election results start pouring in, all eyes will be fixed on some seats where political leaders will be facing arch rivals.

In Karachi, the most prestigious seat is NA-250, whose outcome is unpredictable. In 2002, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal - an alliance of religious parties - won the seat, followed by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) in 2008. This time around several new candidates are contesting this hotspot and have a fair chance of giving the stalwarts a tough fight.

Jamaat-i-Islami’s (JI) Niamatullah Khan, the former city nazim, is contesting against Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) senior leader Rashid Rabbani. The MQM winner from last elections, Khushbakht Shujaat, is also eyeing this seat along with Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s Karachi division president Dr Arif Alvi.

The JI is confident of their victory since their candidate defeated both the MQM and the PPP in the last polls the party contested, but the MQM believes that the party will win since they were a close second in 2002. The PPP felt that the seat belongs to them. “Despite the rigging in the last elections, our candidate Mirza Iftikhar Baig got 44,412 votes,” Rabbani pointed out.



This seat, which covers all of Clifton, DHA and parts of Saddar, is one of the strongest seats the PTI has in Sindh. “Young, vibrant and educated people are fed up with the same faces and they are looking forward to a change,” said Dr Alvi. “We have high hopes that people living in this highly literate constituency will vote in my favour.”

Apart from this, the national assembly seats in Landhi (NA-255), Lyari (NA-248), and Ranchore Lines and Garden (NA-249) are constituencies where tough fights can be expected.

In Ranchore Lines, MQM’s Farooq Sattar is facing its former coalition partner PPP’s candidate Abdul Aziz Memon. Dr Sattar has won this seat four times but the outcome this time is unpredictable. In Landhi, the Mohajir Qaumi Movement - Haqiqi chief, Afaq Ahmed, is contesting the elections, even though he was not able to enter the party’s stronghold even once during campaign.

PPP campaign lukewarm in lower Sindh

The Pakistan Peoples Party, which led exuberant campaigns in 2002 and 2008 elections, took a back seat in Hyderabad and Mirpurkhas divisions. Comprising nearly half of all districts in Sindh, these areas only saw six public meetings and none of them were organised by the PPP. The chiefs of Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement addressed two and four public meetings, respectively.

Also conspicuous of its absence was the PTI. The vice chairperson Makhdoom Shah Mehmood Qureshi busied himself only in Umerkot and Tharparkar districts, where he is contesting on NA-228 and NA-230 seats, respectively.

In Matiari district, the home constituency of PPP-Parliamentarians chairperson Makhdoom Ameen Fahim, the former PPP stalwarts, such as Nazeer Rahu, Ali Ahmed Nizamani and the formidable Memon community have joined hands against the Makhdooms.

A close contest will also be seen on three of the five PS seats in Thatta where the PPP candidates, Abdul Hameed Soomro, Sassui Palijo and Owais Muzaffar, are facing the Sheerazi and PML-N candidates.

Where Qaim meets Ghous

In upper Sindh, an interesting constituency to watch will be where two former chief ministers come face to face. On PS-29 Khairpur, Qaim Ali Shah of the PPP and Ghous Ali Shah of PML-N are contesting. The national assembly seat in Larkana, NA-204, will also witness a tough fight as PPP’s Ayaz Soomro will face PPP-Shaheed Bhutto’s Ghinwa Bhutto and PML-F’s Mehtab Akbar Rashdi.

There will be a tough fight on the national assembly seat where PPP’s Faryal Talpur will face Ghinwa Bhutto. This constituency is likely to witness a split between the Bhutto family clan and die-hard supporters. The same seat was won four times by the slain PPP chairperson, Benazir Bhutto. After her death in 2007, the seat was taken over by Faryal Talpur.

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Published in The Express Tribune, May 11^th, 2013.