ISLAMABAD: The Muttahida Qaumi Movement — Pakistan (MQM-P) will regain the seats it lost in 2018 as the unification of almost all of the party’s factions has consolidated its vote bank, federal minister Aminul Haque asserted on Tuesday.

“MQM will be able to win 16 seats, or maybe more, of the National Assembly from Karachi,” Syed Aminul Haque, the federal minister for information technology, said while talking to journalists in his office. A number of other MQM-P leaders were present on the occasion.

He said the MQM-P’s strength had “totally changed” from what it was in 2016 and 2017, while the PTI was a shambles.

The PTI won 13, out of Karachi’s 21 seats for the National Assembly, in the 2018 elections, but the minister not only dismissed suggestions the party was a threat to the MQM, but also added that even the bubble of Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan had fizzled out.

“While Jamaat–i-Islami always bags six to seven per cent of the total votes in each constituency,” Mr Haque added, “it has been able to grab seats only when the MQM boycotted the polls,” he said.

“MQM-P has always raised the slogan of Pakistan Zindabad and those who opposed it have been forced to leave the party,” the minister said in reply to a question about the ‘minus one formula’ in MQM after removal of its founder, Altaf Hussain.

“Imran Khan made the same mistake and he should not have done it,” he said, reiterating the MQM-P would regain all its seats lost to PTI.

The people of Karachi are satisfied with MQM-P as the party has “successfully fought and settled the issues of census”.

As a result, Karachi is likely to get one more seat in the National Assembly.

“The leaders of MQM-P who had left or formed their own groups, for instance Mustafa Kamal and Farooq Sattar, are now back at one platform again,” Mr Haque said. “Our organisational set-up, which was said to have been erased, is functional once again and MQM-P offices have started reopening in Karachi and other areas.”

He said the caretaker prime minister was likely to be named on Thursday (Aug 10) and the decision would be made by the PML-N as it was the largest party in the ruling coalition. The MQM-P leader simply smiled when asked ‘who the stakeholders are?’

“Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is expected to meet coalition leaders today [Wednesday] and we prefer that the announcement of dissolution of the National Assembly is made in the Parliament house,” Mr Haque said. He opposed the deferment of elections beyond March next year, saying that it won’t benefit any party and would destabilise the entire system.

Published in Dawn, August 9th, 2023