Mediators still interested in having a stab at uniting MQM-P and PSP

The people who orchestrated the alliance, however brief, between the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) and the Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) are still interested in bringing the two parties together.

In the meantime both parties are investing their energies in increasing their respective vote banks. The MQM-P has decided to hold a public meeting in Hyderabad on December 8. The PSP, claiming to have registered over 100,000 workers in its three-day membership drive in Karachi earlier this month, is likely to arrange a similar programme soon. And for now neither party is flexible in their respective stances.

“Our stance is clear: we won’t accept the MQM’s name or its electoral symbol of kite, if we form an alliance,” the PSP’s senior vice-chairperson, Waseem Aftab, told The News.

“As long as the MQM stays, regardless of the suffix, [MQM founder] Altaf Hussain stays in politics.” Aftab, who formerly served in a key position in the MQM’s top decision-making body, the Rabita (Coordination) Committee, said the PSP sat with the MQM-P because it hoped to come up with a better strategy to rid Karachi and Sindh’s other urban centres of Altaf’s style of ethnic and violent politics.

“The people of the metropolis, particularly the Mohajirs [Urdu-speaking community], have witnessed their fair share of violence and now they can’t go through it any more.” The condition that the MQM-P will not be accepted by the PSP seems to be the principal bone of contention, with the other important question of who would lead the alliance, if it were to ever happen.

“Though we have a far better standing than the PSP, we’re open to talks for an alliance on certain conditions, one of which is that the coalition would be on the seats we traditionally haven’t been winning,” the MQM-P’s spokesperson, Aminul Haque, told The News.

“Our November 5 gathering at the Liaquatabad flyover is an answer to those dreaming of finishing us. The public is supreme and they have given their verdict as to who they stand with,” Haque said, suggesting that the MQM-P has the potential to fill the political vacuum in urban centres and maintain opposition to the Pakistan Peoples Party in the province.

Mutual friends step in

Ever since the dramatic break-up of the alliance between the MQM-P and the PSP, a deadlock persists between the two parties. However, some of their mutual friends have been trying to bring them back to the negotiating table because they believe the alliance is the only way out of the current crisis. Saleem Shahzad, the MQM’s former senior leader who had been based in London for the most part, has been convening meetings with individuals and groups to persuade leaders of both parties to go for an alliance.

Odds in favour of talks

On the likelihood of talks between the MQM-P and the PSP, political analyst Mazhar Abbas told The News that the odds were in favour of resuming negotiations but not in the coming weeks.

Abbas said the outbursts after both parties claimed that the establishment was behind the bid to redraw the political landscape apparently caused the external intervention to pause, adding that it was premature to suggest that the involvement had completely stopped.

Given the current political scenario in which two offshoots of a party would be vying to secure the same vote bank, the analyst said the possibility of the votes being divided among them and others was absolute. “The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal’s (MMA) expected revival would make the situation more challenging.”