‘Boosted’ by anti-govt protests, JUI-F starts preparing for LG elections

Claiming success in the recent series of anti-government protests across the country, particularly in Karachi, the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) feels that the party has been revitalised in the metropolitan city.

The JUI-F’s Sindh chapter has asked its district leaders to start preparations for the upcoming local government elections and submit proposals for nominations of suitable candidates across the city.

A few days ago JUI-F Sindh General Secretary Dr Rashid Mehmood Soomro headed a meeting at Shamsi Society. Central, provincial and district leaders attended the meeting, shared their views about the prevailing political situation in their respective areas and gave suggestions for the approaching LG polls.

JUI-F Deputy General Secretary Aslam Ghouri, Sindh deputy chief Maulana Abdul Karim Abid, provincial leaders Maulana Muhammad Ghayas and Sami Swati, and the district chiefs were among the participants of the meeting.

The meeting was told that the LG bodies will be completing their tenure, and that the government might announce the schedule for the next elections.

“Our party has been strengthened and has revitalised itself after taking part in the anti-government agitations, and we are hopeful about succeeding in the upcoming LG polls,” said Swati, who is the party’s provincial deputy information secretary.

Amid curbs in the other three provinces, the JUI-F had launched its Azadi March in October from Karachi. Swati said the party has decided to field its candidates across the province, including in Karachi. The JUI-F currently has 450 LG representatives, including chairmen, vice-chairmen and councillors, across the province.

“In the past LG elections, the party had fielded around 1,100 candidates across the province, but in the upcoming polls, the party will field a candidate for every union committee,” Swati told The News.

In Karachi, the JUI-F has asked its district leadership to find suitable candidates for the elections at union committee level and to also prepare local political analyses that will help the party ink seat adjustments and local alliances with different parties at union committee and district levels in the city.

In the past LG elections, the JUI-F had made seat adjustments with various political parties, including the Pakistan Peoples Party, the Awami National Party (ANP), the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, in the city’s different neighbourhoods.

Some party leaders disclosed to The News that the JUI-F is interested in making agreements with the mainstream political parties instead of forming alliances with religious parties, such as the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA).

However, interviews with JUI-F leaders in Karachi suggest that the party is mainly focusing on the city’s Pashtun neighbourhoods because they enjoy a significant support base there.

The party had won three provincial assembly seats in Karachi’s Pashtun-populated areas — Landhi Industrial Area, SITE and Baldia Town — under the MMA banner in the 2002 general elections.

Analysts monitoring politics of Karachi’s Pashtuns believe that the community has never acted as a homogeneous ethnic group on the electoral front and has traditionally aligned with different political and religious parties, mainly the ANP, the JUI-F, the JI and, more recently, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

PTI candidates won national and provincial assembly seats during the 2018 general elections from most of the constituencies where Pashtuns live in significant numbers. The community preferred the national party of cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan to ethnic and religious parties.