Governing Karachi

The political rivalries in Karachi and the attendant violence over the years had left a void in the governance of the city that could not be filled even after local government elections because there was no space to operate. For far too many years, governance in Karachi has been a hodgepodge with everyone unsure of their respective authority. The city has traditionally seen mainly two political players fight it out – the PPP, because it has held on to the Sindh government for years now, and the MQM which sees Karachi as its main constituency. The long-running political tussle between the two parties had generally affected governance in Karachi to the point where most development in the city ground to a halt. The MQM had (justifiably to an extent) said that the provincial government had wrested away most of the powers that belonged to local representatives, leaving rather defanged mayors (mostly from the MQM). Amidst all this also sits the Jamaat-e-Islami, no stranger to the Karachi voter, and the PTI, a new entrant that got quite a few votes in the 2018 elections.

Enter 2023, and the city of Karachi gets its first PPP mayor: Murtaza Wahab. A close contest between Wahab and JI’s Hafiz Naeemur Rehman has ended with an elected mayor whose election has been rejected by the JI and the PTI both, with allegations of gerrymandering, abductions and rigging abounding. Here are the numbers: Murtaza Wahab bagged 173 votes while Hafiz Naeemur Rehman got 160 votes. In simple math, the conclusion is foregone; Wahab wins. But that’s where the story gets murky, as far as the JI’s allegations go. The JI says it had support of the PTI UC chairpersons. That support, however, did not come through. Thirty-two members were absent at the time of the vote; 31 from the PTI and one from the TLP. The JI and PTI allege these votes did not come through due to arm-twisting by the PPP. The JI had largely run a slick campaign during the local government elections, banking on the trust factor offered by Hafiz Naeemur Rehman, and the nostalgia of the time Naimatullah Khan was the mayor of Karachi in 2001, a time the people of Karachi remember fondly for better service delivery. The JI had figured out the pulse of Karachi’s problems: governance (or lack of it), and had led with this one slogan: service delivery. For the PPP too this was a do-or-die situation: the party finally getting much closer to the coveted Karachi mayor seat than ever before, with the MQM having foolishly boycotted the elections.

Now that Murtaza Wahab is in the mayoral seat, the PPP must realize that it has to earn the trust of the city. The people of Karachi are tired and angry and there is a potent sense of neglect in a city that feels it has only ever given and never quite gotten anything back. The city has seen violence, poor governance and uncertainty for so long and badly needs local bodies that work for its people and can offer them some degree of stability and development. It is time to move on from the Karachi of violence, bad governance, and despair to a Karachi that is well-run and can take all the varying stakeholders along. In this, can we hope that the new mayor and deputy mayor – Salman Murad, also of the PPP – can reach out to the JI and the PTI and offer to work with them to govern this city? At the end of the day, the PPP, JI, MQM-P and PTI will just have to work together in Karachi, which has deteriorated in almost all benchmarks of civic administration. There is literally no excuse left now for bad governance, since we now have a mayor who comes from the same party that runs the provincial government. With clout, funds, some will, and provincial support, perhaps Karachi c will finally get the TLC it deserves.