MQM-Pakistan distances itself from banners calling for alliance with Musharraf

Leaders of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-Pakistan) can deny till they are blue in the face, but each passing day comes with an indication or two that they are in talks with former army chief Pervez Musharraf to explore the possibility of an alliance or if he could be part of their party.

Banners supporting an alliance between Musharraf, who leads the All Pakistan Muslim League which founded in 2010, and MQM-Pakistan chief Farooq Sattar appeared in Karachi on Monday, days after a plus-one formula — addition of the ex-army chief to the MQM-Pakistan — came to surface.

The banners, put up by unknown people as they usually are, were visible outside the Karachi Press Club under the “Muttahida Qaumi Jirga Pakistan”.

The banners depicted the two leaders together and were inscribed with the slogans saying “MQM-Pakistan and Musharraf are brothers” and “Jaag Muhajir Jaag”.

On November 12, MQM-Pakistan leader Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui met Musharraf in Dubai.

On November 8, an important meeting was held between Musharraf and representatives of the MQM-Pakistan. But Khawaja Izhar-ul-Hassan, the party’s opposition leader in the Sindh Assembly, said he went to Dubai 10 to 15 days ago on a personal visit during which he met the former army chief. 

During the meeting, he said, he expressed interest in the plus-one formula although he did not say anything openly.

Talking to The News, MQM-Pakistan spokesman Aminul Haq said his was a democratic party and had no room an army dictator.

He said this in response to a query about the emergence of banners carrying pictures of Sattar and Musharraf. He said: “I repeat no room for a dictator in the party.”

Appearing in Geo News programme ‘Aaj Shahzeb Khanzada Ke Saath’ on Monday night, Dr Farooq Sattar, who had gone to Dubai on a day’s visit last week, denied meeting Musharraf as well as any possibility of an alliance with him, saying that some people were behind spread rumours about the so-called plus-one formula, just as they were behind the minus-one formula.

He said the MQM-Pakistan was the fourth largest political party of the country and its public mandate could not be ignored.

Earlier, senior politician Ahmed Raza Kasuri suggested on a private television that if the APML chief became the MQM-Pakistan’s leader, the party would be freed from the allegations of links to Indian spy agency RAW or being pro-India.

He said the party would get a leader who was a former army chief and former president of Pakistan. “No one would accuse it of being pro-India,” he was reported as saying.

“The voter base of the MQM-Pakistan would also increase and the party would be able to reach other areas such as Balochistan etc where it does not have much clout.”

The MQM-P has been facing an uncertain situation since August 22 when attacks on media houses occurred in Karachi’s security zone after the party founder, Altaf Hussain, made an anti-Pakistan telephonic address to a hunger strike camp from London and incited them to violence.

The party, which had become weak from two operations in the 1990s but had singlehandedly been revived by Musharraf after he took over power in a military coup in 1999, has seen its presence in Sindh’s urban areas shrinking due to a paramilitary force-led targeted operation in Karachi.

Yet another challenge to the party arrived in March this year when dissident leader and former city mayor Syed Mustafa Kamal returned from Dubai and formed a political party, Pakistan Sarzameen Party. Several lawmakers have quit the MQM and joined Kamal’s party since