The battle for power: Who will get to run Sindh?

Sources claim that the MQM’s demands for more administrative units is just a bargaining tactic

KARACHI: All is not well in the Sindh government as coalition partners - the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) - are at loggerheads with each other once again.

Both parties are threatening to part ways if certain things aren’t done their way.

The MQM is pushing for more administrative units - carve another province out of Sindh, while the PPP has taken to catchy campaign slogans such as ‘marson marson, Sindh na deson’ [We will die but we won’t give up Sindh].

Party politics

Sources, however, claim that it was nothing but a pressurising tactic to settle issues such as government jobs, local government (LG) elections, land allotment and development fund that were not released on time to the MQM MPAs.

“As soon as the ban on government jobs was lifted, things got tense,” said a source. “The MQM is asking for more than a 50 per cent share in LG as well as the health department. They also want to implement a 60:40 per cent quota in other departments for urban and rural areas. The PPP, however, is unwilling to do anything.” He added that more than 40,000 government jobs were being advertised and this was creating problems between both the political parties.

The demand for a Mohajir province, said a senior PPP leader, was just a bargaining chip the MQM uses as leverage in the negotiation process. “The people demanding a new province will go into hiding as soon as the government resolves their issues,” he said. “Basically, the MQM wants to control places like the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation, Karachi Water and Sewerage Board which are being run by PPP ministers and MPAs.”

The MQM speaks back

Sources in the MQM believe that the government was at fault as they had not fulfilled promises made to the party.

According to the party’s Rabita Committee member, Aminul Haque, several issues had created a dent in the PPP-MQM coalition. “The provincial government has totally ignored Karachi in development schemes,” he said while talking to The Express Tribune. “Out of Rs800billion only Rs40billion have been allocated for Karachi. This amount includes non-development expenditure at Chief Minister House, Governor House, the Sindh secretariat and other government offices.” He added that the MPAs development fund of Rs40million had been released to PPP MPAs but the MQM lawmakers were still waiting for their share.

According to Haque, all institutions seem to have been taken over by the chief minister. “He also heads the solid waste management board,” he said. “This means that the CM works as chief sanitary inspector and if you look at Karachi there are heaps of trash and garbage everywhere.”

He added that the new education policy - e-centralised policy, had added more fuel to the fire.

Despite how the MQM and PPP feel towards each other at the moment, PPP’s co-chairperson Asif Ali Zardari is reported to have said that if Altaf Hussain was upset with them, they knew how to make it up to him.

The set-up

Although MQM MPAs were given portfolios, it appears that they have limited authority as the secretaries of their departments have been appointed with the consent of the PPP leadership.

“This has irked MQM ministers because the secretaries are taking orders from CM House and not them,” said a senior bureaucrat in Sindh government, adding that the PPP wanted to divide the health department into primary and secondary in order to have two ministers and secretaries.

He claimed that the PPP had also come up with a way to counter the MQM’s demand for a new province by announcing that they would fire several ghost employees of the KMC and KWSB - ‘a direct threat to the MQM’. He added that it wasn’t the new demand for a new province that was the problem, but the fact that the MQM was asking for something else.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 6^th, 2014.