Even as much of the media attention has been focused on the fight between the PML-N and PTI to gain control of Punjab in this month’s general elections, Karachi is shaping up to be a pivotal battleground whose National Assembly seats could be the deciding factor in what promises to be a close election. The implosion of the MQM means that the party’s dominance in urban Sindh can no longer be taken for granted. The PTI in particular sees this as an opportunity to make inroads into Karachi. Imran Khan visited Karachi on Wednesday to make a case for his party, arguing that only the PTI could solve the city’s many problems. Imran himself is running for the NA-243 seat from Karachi, showing how much importance the party is placing on the city. But it is not clear yet if the PTI can recover from the missteps of the past. It had an encouraging showing in Karachi in 2013, but since then the party’s Sindh chapter has been riven by internal divisions and Imran himself has been criticised for not paying enough attention to Karachi. The results in by-elections were generally dismal for the PTI and it will now be hoping that a national wave of support carries it to victory in the city.
For the MQM-Pakistan, it is hard to imagine a more difficult scenario. The Bahadurabad and PIB factions have yet to reconcile and Farooq Sattar seems to be the leader of the party on little more than paper. He went through a protracted drama over whether he would stand for elections and the process of awarding tickets to candidates showed just how disunited the party is. The MQM-P hasn’t been helped by the fact that it continues to be squeezed. It complains of its members still being picked up and now NAB is initiating cases against some of its candidates too. What, of late, may have been more damaging to the MQM than anything else are the circus and somersaults its leaders have been performing, setting new standards in peculiarity associated with how the party conducts itself. It has been one sorry sight after another following the confusion that the party has been thrown into without the ‘guidance’ of its once supreme leader whose soundness of mind was/is itself not quite certain. Caretaker Interior Minister Azam Khan has warned that the rift within the MQM-P could lead to clashes in Karachi. While that seems unlikely, the fact that the opinion was so publicly aired shows that the path ahead may not exactly be rosy. The PPP, like the PTI, will be hoping to take advantage of the present situation. But the bigger problem for it right now may be the Grand Democratic Alliance – a collection of anti-PPP parties in Sindh that have banded together to try and defeat it in Sindh. The MQM-P too has hinted that it may join the GDA although it has little to offer outside Karachi. It is difficult to think of a moment in the past several decades when external factors and the dynamics within established parties in Karachi led to the city being so open electorally. Who in the end makes the most of it remains open to question.