KARACHI, Feb 16: The allegiance of President Pervez Musharraf’s junior coalition ally, the party controlling the country’s biggest city of Karachi, is up for grabs again — for whoever wins Monday’s general election.

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) has shared power with changing governments for much of the past two decades.

It has no plans to stop now, and this time it’s hoping to tie up with the front-running party of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, which is tipped to come out on top in the Feb 18 vote and is now led by her widower Asif Ali Zardari.

“Any political party which claims to be progressive, moderate and secular, I think I’ll have no problem going along with that,” Farooq Sattar, the MQM’s Deputy Convener, told Reuters in an interview.

“One hundred per cent, we’ll offer the coalition to Zardari. And I think he has also made this offer to Altaf Hussain,” added Sattar, whose party formed a coalition with the previous government of the Pakistan Muslim League.

With a total of 13 seats in the 2002 election, its support could help tip the balance in an expected hung parliament for whichever party seeks to form a government. The MQM has been allied to four of Pakistan’s past five governments.

And if the PML-N, led by opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, which is one of the three main parties in the upcoming election and with which the MQM has shared power during two previous governments, wins?

“A bitter pill can be swallowed. I don’t rule it out,” Sattar said. “There is no final word in politics.” The party fell out with Sharif during his second government from 1997-1999 over policy differences and pulled out of that coalition.—Reuters