Politics, change — and flux

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) appears to be marching resolutely backwards towards its future — at least its elected representatives do. Negotiations between the government and the MQM appear to have collapsed, not that they were making much progress anyway. With both sides now entrenched, the government will in all probability pursue ‘carrot and stick’ but there is no telling where that might lead. The MQM for its part accused the government of ‘not being serious enough’ which, decoded, means that the government failed to accede to everything demanded by the MQM. Leaders of the party who had waited for hours in Islamabad in the hope that they would be called back to the negotiating table, eventually left.

Thus the MQM has, like the Pakistan-Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) before it embarked on a path of denial of representation for every single one of the millions that voted for it. The MQM members of the Senate, the National Assembly and the Sindh provincial assembly are now saying that their resignations are irrevocable and should be accepted as such. If taken as such, then by-elections will have to be arranged and the struggle for power run yet again.

Whether one supports the PTI or not, one cannot escape the perception that it has altered the dynamics of the wider politics of Pakistan. It may have failed in its attempt to take national power, and equally failed to prove that the 2013 election was rigged everywhere, thus cheating the PTI of the victory it believed was its by right. But it has challenged the old order, and nowhere more so than in Karachi, the MQM stronghold. Again it did not ‘win big’ in Karachi but it polled in sufficient numbers to indicate a strong vote bank. It will be this that the MQM will be eyeing in the event of by-elections and old loyalties may no longer be assumed to hold fast. The MQM and its leadership has painted itself into a corner that its political rivals can now besiege at their leisure as political flux works its mysteries.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 5^th, 2015.

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