Main parties openly campaign in Karachi

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Supporters of Pakistani cricket star-turned-politician and head of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Imran Khan (unseen) gather at his political campaign rally for the upcoming general election in Lahore on July 18. Pakistan will hold a general election on July 25 pitting the Pakistani Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) against its main rival, the PTI, led by Khan. (AFP)

KARACHI, Pakistan, July 19, (Agencies): For over 25 years, maverick political leader Altaf Hussain had an iron grip on Karachi, able to bring Pakistan’s largest city to a standstill with a single phone call. But much has changed in the last five years in the coastal metropolis of 20 million people, and the transformation is playing out in the run-up to Pakistan’s general election next week.

The country’s three main national parties now campaign openly in the teeming, financial hub, once considered one of the world’s most dangerous cities and dominated for decades by Hussain’s Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), even though he himself has lived in self-imposed exile in London since 1992. “Karachi is peaceful today,” said Shehla Raza, a candidate for the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) in one of Karachi’s parliamentary constituencies. “I am going to bazaars (markets), multi-storey apartment blocks, I am getting a tremendous response.” At the last election in 2013, the MQM won 16 of Karachi’s 20 seats, and critics say they were aided by a campaign of intimidation and violence.

Some months after the election, a paramilitary crackdown transformed Karachi, sharply bringing down murder and kidnapping rates, while splits within the MQM’s leadership in 2016 broke the grip of Hussain. Hussain’s representatives in London did not respond to requests for comment. Hussain has denied charges in the past of exhorting his supporters to violence. He has said hundreds of MQM members have been arrested and killed in extra-judicial operations. Authorities say they have targeted criminals and militants irrespective of political affiliation, and brought down crime rates considerably.

According to the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, at least 57 people were killed and nearly 300 injured in violence in Karachi from January 2013 until the election in May that year. This year, police say, just two murders have been reported. The change is palpable in the city – people throng to shopping malls and restaurants until past midnight. In earlier years, the city would essentially shut down soon after dark. With elections coming up, Karachi is festooned with party flags and posters and small neon-lit trucks scurry around the city with photographs of leading candidates. PPP workers installed billboards sporting the face of party leader Bilawal Bhutto Zardari atop the MQM’s former headquarters, an act that would have been unimaginable in previous elections.

The city’s current 21 seats represent a tempting prize for the main parties vying for control of the 272 elected seats in the National Assembly. They may also be crucial for smaller parties hoping to play kingmaker if, as many expect, the elections result in a hung parliament. Nationally, polls suggest the election is between the opposition party of cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz of now-jailed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, which hopes to win a second term in office. Both Khan and Sharif’s brother, Shehbaz Sharif, are among the contestants for seats from the city.

Also hoping for a strong showing is the Bhutto family’s PPP, which is running third nationally in opinion polls but dominates politics in the rest of Sindh province, where Karachi is located. The MQM emerged from the city’s university student movements in the 1980s, giving voice to ethnic Mohajirs, descendants of Urdu-speaking migrants from India, who form the largest group in the city. For much of the 1990s, security forces in Karachi cracked down on the MQM, eventually pushing Hussain to seek asylum in the United Kingdom.

Even from exile in London, Hussain controlled the city through a powerful network, a security official and several former MQM leaders told Reuters. Then, in 2013, the national government led by then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif gave free rein to the paramilitary Rangers for a sweeping crackdown on crime. In 2016, MQM leaders in Karachi announced a split from Hussain and his inner circle in London amidst infighting and a leadership struggle leaving the party in disarray with three competing factions.

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