Karachi politics

It is often said that the smaller a group is the more divisions there are within it. No one has proven the wisdom of this truism more than the PTI and the PML-N in Karachi. At a time when the MQM is in disarray, there is a real opportunity for one or both of the parties to fill the void. But they insist on remaining stuck in their own petty politics. A perfect illustration of this came    on Wednesday         when local PTI leader Imran Ismail was giving a speech and was pushed aside by Amanullah Afridi, the PML-N’s candidate for deputy mayor. He accused the PTI of backing out of a deal to support him in the balloting. In his distasteful display, Afridi seemed not to care that he stood no chance of defeating the MQM’s Arshad Vohra, with or without the PTI’s support. This incident encapsulates the own goals both parties continually score. The PML-N has been a non-entity in Karachi. Right now, the PPP is at such a low ebb that the PML-N has a chance to move beyond its Punjab power base and replace the PPP as the only truly national party. To do so, it would have to concentrate on grassroot politics to establish a base from which to challenge the MQM. Bickering with the PTI over minor issues is not a sound strategy.

The PTI has been even more wasteful than the PML-N. In the 2008 elections, it established itself as the second largest party in the city in terms of votes received and even took away seats held by the MQM. Then it threw it all away by focusing on protests and rigging rather than governance and building the party. The disarray the PTI is in was seen in the by-elections for NA-245 in May when its candidate, Amjadullah Khan, backed out and offered his support to the MQM just one day for the election. His complaint, echoed by many others in the party, was that Imran Khan as well as the central party leadership in Karachi, did not expend the time and resources to win elections or even attract new members. The end result, as we saw at Ismail’s press conference, is that both the PTI and PML-N are reduced to fighting over who will be a distant second to the MQM.

Nabil Hasan

Karachi