NA-246 Bye-elections: After Initial Hullabaloo, MQM & PTI Resort to Sanity
By Salahuddin   Haider
Karachi, Pakistan

Criticism may well greet these lines. One can understand, because commentaries on political matters usually bring forth polarized opinions. Truth, however, has to be told fearlessly, and in an unbiased manner. The political temperature rose to frightening levels as if the bye-election contest for the national assembly constituency of NA-246 was a war between enemy states. But as wisdom prevailed, all the fireworks, vitriolic words from the two sides, Imran and Altaf, petered out. It all looked like nothing more than a hullabaloo in the end. And that is the beauty of democracy.

Karachi is still tense, quite naturally because election, of any sort, generates its own heat. Luckily for the residents of the city, it is no more as scary now,as it was until eight to ten days ago.

No point in repeating the assertions from the two sides, because decency which alone was the victim in the entire campaign until two three days ago, will once again decay into an abyss, which could well be dangerous. So why recall an episode which is mere history now. It must be emphasized here that a mayhem had been avoided, and that in itself is a great achievement, thanks to good sense shown by both sides.

A word or two will nevertheless be required here to laud the generosity shown by the leaders of the two principal contestants --- PTI’s Imran Ismail and MQM’s Kunwar Naved Jamil. The third is a Jamat i Islami nominee but he is eclipsed by circumstances and perhaps won't even matter in the end.

Credit must be given to Imran for his daunting spirit to challenge a party in its stronghold of Azizabad. None had done that before him. But then while the Rabita Committee followed the dotted lines, Altaf was too courageous and humane to wave the olive branch first. Imran reciprocated and both thus contributed immensely to lend strength and credibility to democracy -- the voice of the people.

They both needed to be lauded, and with them praise is also due to Reham Imran Khan for her latest remarks to appeal to Altaf Hussain to be in Peshawar and help broaden the scope of street children, of which she is the chairman in KhyberPukhottonkhaw now, and to the Shauakt Memorial Hospital, which her cricketer-turned-politician husband has been trying to set up there.

Such an attitude of sanity   enormously helped in reassuring the people that elections are just an exercise to raise a true structure of democracy to which common man’s and poorer segments of the society too, along with others, can proudly contribute their mite.

Reference to history becomes an automatic necessity here. A party, MQM in this case, appeared on the horizon in 1986 to introduce a new philosophy, give a new definition to politics and through the efforts of a handful of youngsters fresh from universities and medical colleges, did what the people really were looking for.

They began with small charities for the Orangi settlers, uprooted from their homes in the grim tragedy of 1971, thought it fit later to jump into elections, and since then, all the past veterans like Jamat i Islami, Peoples Party, and the Jamiat-e- Ulema-i-Pakistan, got eliminated.

The question naturally arises as to why this happened? The answer is simple. These parties, winning the 1970 elections, and overwhelming the inglorious 1977 polls, found themselves completely at sea after that. They never bothered to fathom the discontent of the people because of policies pursued by successive governments until then.

Altaf and his colleagues studied the situation closely and tried to raise their voice at different platforms. They got the required response. Since1987 municipal or 1988 general elections, MQM has been constantly   outclassing, outmaneuvering everyone.

So Imran and his colleagues in PTI must realize that their endeavors to provide alternate leadership are laudable, but electoral victory comes the hard way than they have been thinking or have thought so far. For most analysts, PTI may have dented the MQM position, but victory, which may well tantamount to uprooting MQM from their power base,   won't be easy.

(The writer is a former Sindh Minister and senior journalist)