Why are workers leaving PSP?

KARACHI: Tauqeer Ahmed was apprehensive of the unchecked inductions into the Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) since the Mustafa Kamal-led party came into being in March 2016. He worried that the party was not on the right track.

Ahmed, the then president of the PSP’s labour division, had also shared his concerns with the party’s leadership that the addition of so many workers from its rival parties would damage its reputation, but to no avail.

“People are not naïve enough to not know what’s going on,” said the 36-year-old who left the party two weeks after the July 25 general election to join the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf.

“I had already told the leadership about my decision,” he said in an interview with The News. “Everyone has the right to see things their way.”

Post-poll defections

Contrary to the tall claims of Mustafa Kamal and Anis Kaimkhani that PSP will emerge as the largest political party of Karachi, they were able to bag only 3.8 per cent of the total 7.57 million registered votes in the city. This major upset caused several of the party’s workers to switch loyalties and others to become inactive.

“We lost because of our own mistakes,” said Ahmed, opining that PSP took into its folds even the habitual criminals, which hurt its chances of winning.

“Not everyone associated with the Muttahida Quami Movement was a criminal and not everyone was an angel.”

He believed that voters rejected the party when they saw the criminals coming in with a new tag.

Ahmed has been a political activist for 20 years now. At the age of 16, he joined the All Pakistan Muttahida Students Organization as a student activist at Delhi College. He then remained associated with the MQM until the PSP was formed in March 2016. “I joined PSP because of Kamal and PTI because of Imran Khan,” he said.

According to Ahmed, there is no hard and fast rule that one cannot leave a political party.

“Although I am a PTI worker now, I still keep a soft corner for PSP because we have worked and ate together,” he said.

“At the end of the day, us, political workers, are working towards the same goal to make this society a better place.”

He claimed that at least 1,000 PSP and other parties’ workers from Karachi and Hyderabad have joined PTI, after him.

“We have opened seven party units in Pakistan Railways, Jamshed Town

and Gulshan Town of District Municipal Corporation-East, Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, Karachi Municipal Corporation and Sindh School Education Department.”

Farhan Ali*, a PSP worker from Azizabad, is also disappointed with the party. His reasons are, however, different from Ahmed. “The party leadership did the same mistakes that they did in the MQM.

People, despite having bad reputations, were awarded responsibilities and they did the same thing, they had been doing: make use of fear,” he said.

Ali said that it is not the parties that are bad but the individuals. “When such persons meet, they make a gang. Same thing affected the PSP,” he said.

“How can you expect that person X, who has a history of crimes, will have a change of mind overnight? And if this happens so, what barometer do you have to gauge the change?”

He appeared annoyed with not all but some leaders in the party who he thinks are inflicting the most loss with their modus operandi. “Nothing keeps hidden, at least in this age. When you threaten a person even discreetly, it became news overnight with just word of mouth. No TV, no newspaper would be needed.”

Ali said that he was not thinking of joining any other political party, at least for now.

“I am still a part of PSP. I wish that the leadership will carefully look into what went wrong and will take necessary measures. Or else, it will meet the same fate as of MQM-Haqiqi.

At the end, Afaq Ahmed had to leave the same party he founded.”

Freedom of choice

When asked about workers jumping ship or being unhappy with the party cadres following the dismal defeat in the elections, PSP Senior Vice-Chairman Waseem Aftab was positive about PSP’s approach and journey since inception.

He said his party played the leading role in changing the political dynamics of the city that revolved around terrorism.

“There was one party – MQM. Its workers could not leave because they knew that they may face dire consequences. Now people are free to join whatever party they like. Nobody would stop them.”

Aftab said that PSP encourages peoples’ right to politics. “We want people to live in harmony with each other, keeping their difference.

This is the change we promote so that people from the basic tier of politics – workers – are tolerant enough to see things on the bigger picture. Our success cannot be judged with the number of votes or the number of workers,” he said, trying to dispel the perception that a large number of workers had left.

He added that his party has already emerged as an option for the people of Karachi. “More than 100,000 people voted for us. We think that it was a good enough for a two-year-old party,” he said, citing the example of Prime Minister Imran Khan, who met success after 22 years of political struggle.