Not surprising

As the first by-election to be conducted after the sidelining of Altaf Hussain by MQM-Pakistan, the polls for PS-127, a Sindh Assembly seat which covers Malir, was always going to be seen as a referendum on the state of the party. That the MQM candidate Waseem Ahmed lost the seat to the PPP’s Murtaza Baloch – and that too by a margin of nearly 7,000 votes after the party had held the seat for 12 years – would not seem to augur well for the MQM’s future. But such elections tend to hinge more on local issues and structural factors like ethnic make-up and the rural-urban divide than a party’s national standing and it would be advisable to start there when analysing the cause of the MQM’s defeat. PS-127 can be divided into two halves – the urban Malir Cantonment, Malir Extension Colony and its surroundings, and the rural villages of Gadap Town where the population is mostly ethnic Baloch and Sindhi. The former has always been dominated by the MQM and the latter by the PPP. The PPP was able to prevail by turning out more voters from its areas than the MQM managed in their areas of influence.

That the PPP was able to play the turnout game better than the MQM was hardly surprising as it had been laying the groundwork for retaking seats it had lost to the MQM for more than a year. In March 2015, the provincial PPP government fulfilled a longstanding demand of rural residents and revived the District Council Karachi, which gave the rural areas of Malir and other districts their own separate local bodies representation. By taking the rural areas of Malir out of the hands of the Malir District Municipal Corporation, the PPP earned itself the gratitude of its residents. It was further helped by the poor performance of the PTI, which theoretically should appeal to the same voters as the PPP but is in disarray in Karachi. The MQM, meanwhile, suffered low turnout in its areas as it found itself involved in, or facing, clashes with the MQM-Haqiqi. It has alleged that Haqiqi men were working in cahoots with the PPP to disrupt the process for the MQM and that the police made the task easy for them. The MQM was also not helped by the Pak Sarzameen Party – which was not on the ticket but spurred the by-election when the constituency MPA Ashfaq Ahmed Mangi defected to them – decided to hold a large anti-MQM rally with Mustafa Kamal. In the national narrative, though, all these factors will be cast aside to portray the MQM as facing an existential crisis and the potential loss of its Karachi stronghold. The problem for the MQM is that such impressions, even if mistaken, can quickly take hold and become reality. It will have to get its electoral game back in order to quiet the negative headlines.