PSP seeks to cash in on MQM’s Senate fiasco

With the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) mired in criticism for losing Saturday’s Senate elections, the Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) has leapt to gain from the situation.

Addressing a news conference at the PSP’s headquarters, the Pakistan House, on Sunday, party chief Mustafa Kamal reiterated that the Urdu-speaking community has no other option but to join him if they wish to get their due rights. “Mohajirs’ well-being is in talking to us, because only our way is right.”

Referring to the alleged horse-trading in the upper house polls, Kamal said the so-called vanguard of the Urdu-speaking community sold their mandate to looters. “You [the community] should change your watchmen, because they have colluded with thieves to rob your city.”

The former Karachi mayor asked Farooq Sattar and Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui, the heads of the PIB and Bahadurabad groups of the MQM-P respectively, to leave behind all their differences and join the PSP. “Nobody is losing anything, but everyone is gaining something.”

Addressing the Sindh government, Kamal said they should not think that the city is without its caretakers and they should not claim it as some “conquered territory”. The PSP chairman warned them against making any attempt at manipulating the city’s delimitation. “You will inflict an irreparable loss on the country in doing so.”

He remarked that some elements wish to stir up ethnic and sectarian conflicts in the city because a violent situation would help them continue with their looting and plundering. Kamal also urged Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Mian Saqib Nisar to take suo motu notice of the controversial results of the population census held in Karachi.

Commenting on the MQM-P crisis, he said the provincial lawmakers sold their votes because the top-tier leadership of the party was also involved in this. “The MQM and the things associated with it have become a scourge for the Mohajir community.”

A day earlier the MQM-P suffered a major setback in the Senate elections, as the party managed to secure only one general seat — and that too after a lot of struggle.

Dr Farogh Nasim of the party’s Bahadurabad group bagged only 14 votes and, eventually, won through the preferential method.

Consequently, the MQM-P’s standing in the Senate has reduced from eight to five, and it has lost the label of being the fourth largest political party in the upper house of the parliament.

The senator elect will represent the MQM-P again, along with his existing counterparts Khushbakht Shujaat, Mian Muhammad Ateeq Shaikh, Muhammad Ali Khan Saif and Nighat Mirza.

Over the past four years the party’s MPA strength has reduced from 50 to 37, thanks to the nine members who quit – seven of whom joined the PSP and one the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) – and the four who stayed out of the country, apparently due to an operation in the city.

The defeat has increased the prevailing tension between the Sattar-led PIB group and the Siddiqui-led Bahadurabad faction of the MQM-P.

“Today the MQM has lost, but Kamran Tessori has won,” Aminul Haque of the Bahadurabad group had told The News on Saturday in reaction to the results of the Senate elections.

Tessori, who now appears to have become a close confidant of Sattar, was allegedly the primary reason for the infighting within the party. The two groups surfaced publicly last month when the Bahadurabad faction disagreed over Tessori’s candidacy for the Senate polls, as the PIB group backed him and insisted on his nomination.

Haque claimed that the MQM-P had lost because of Sattar’s “stubbornness and arrogance” in Tessori’s matter.“The party lost its identity also... that it supported and elevated the middle-class and oppressed segments of society to the parliament. The lust for money and power has polluted it.”

But Sattar rejected the allegations that Tessori was paying him for gaining the party’s support. Talking to the media outside the Sindh Assembly, he accused the PPP of horse-trading and cast doubts on the transparency and impartiality of the Senate polls.

He said that at least six of his MPAs apparently defected to vote for other parties’ candidates.The PIB faction chief denied that his party had lost because of infighting. “One after another our people, including lawmakers, were forced to join other parties. And some of the MPAs started selling their votes, using the party crisis as an excuse.”

MQM-P MPA Shazia Jawaid, who was among the lawmakers who voted for the PPP, explained that she had voted for the ruling party to defy Sattar, who, she said, put the party at stake just for Tessori. “I did not take money from anybody,” she clarified.