THE long-held belief that Karachi ‘belongs’ to the MQM — or at least did until recently — may not really be true.
If you look at the voting patterns in past general elections and take even the last three: 63 per cent of registered voters in the city in 2002, 53pc in 2008, and 51pc in 2013, did not even bother to cast their ballot. (Given that MQM activists have been blamed for massive rigging in these polls, the actual numbers of those who abstained could be substantially higher.) The majority in Karachi was at best indifferent, or felt powerless to stop the MQM juggernaut.
Nevertheless, in 2013, voters in Karachi made a statement at the ballot box. For the first time in a long while, there was a new player on the block, the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI). The party won the second highest number of votes in the city. The results demonstrated the possibility of making inroads into what were until then solid MQM constituencies, areas such as Liaquatabad, Gulshan-i-Iqbal and Azizabad, the latter in which the formidable nerve centre of the party, Nine Zero, was located. Even the PPP citadel of Lyari was nearly breached by PTI.
Clearly, Karachi had spoken, even though the PTI won only one National Assembly seat and three provincial assembly seats from the city. Its residents were thirsting for change. And who better to vote for than the party that had campaigned on the slogan of tabdeeli?
Since then, what has happened to the tsunami in the city by the sea? This time around, the fervour is noticeably absent. In the eyes of the urban voter, beset with multiple problems arising from a decrepit infrastructure and appalling service delivery, the PTI addressed none of their core concerns. To them, dharnas in Islamabad and “35 punctures” were irrelevant; it only confirmed that post elections, Karachi had become an afterthought for the PTI.
“I won’t be making the same mistake again,” says Mushtaq Ahmed, a Punjabi Hazara living in Keamari. “Even though the PTI didn’t win a seat from here in the general election, the nazim and naib nazim in this UC belonged to the PTI and they didn’t even do anything about the horrendous sewage problems here.”
A psychologist residing in Karachi’s South district — from where the PTI’s Arif Alvi won his National Assembly seat beating MQM’s Khushbakht Shujaat by almost three times the vote — says she doesn’t even plan to cast her ballot. Like many others in this area, which includes some of the more upscale localities, she had voted for the first time, and voted the PTI. “No one I know is even discussing the elections this time. The PTI had managed to create a sense of nationalism in 2013. Now I feel the situation is hopeless.”
(This time, Mr Alvi may have a tougher fight, as his constituency after de-limitation also includes Old City areas where the huge Memon and Kutchi population is not the PTI’s natural constituency. However, they do come out to vote, and the Tehreek-i-Labbaik could make a dent in this historically MQM vote-bank.)