Sindh LG polls

Sunday finally saw the second phase of the Sindh local government elections in a number of Sindh districts including the Karachi and Hyderabad divisions. While the actual polling largely took place without incident, the dramatics before and after the polls pretty much reflect just how contentious politics is in a city like Karachi. First, we had the merged MQM-P boycott the polls, on the basis of its demands for delimitation not having been fulfilled. This has been a longstanding and legitimate grievance of the MQM, which has consistently decried what it says is gerrymandering by the PPP to bolster its vote count. The MQM-P, despite its legitimate demand for delimitation, should either have stuck to this demand when it knew the PDM needed its support — placing the delimitation condition as a prerequisite for any help it could offer the alliance — or opted into the local bodies elections as the JI did.

Overall, per the latest results at the time this editorial is being written, the PPP seems to have managed to take a large lead. However, the inexplicable delay in announcing Karachi’s results — in an election with a super low voter turnout — has only led to scepticism that something fishy is going on. With results still trickling in, the JI is close on the PPP’s heels. This is hardly surprising, given the slick campaign by the party, the trust factor offered by the JI’s Hafiz Naeemur Rehman, and the nostalgia of the time Naimatullah Khan was the mayor of Karachi in 2001, a time the people of Karachi remember fondly for better service delivery. In all this, the PTI has managed to somehow lose rather spectacularly in a city it has 14 MNA seats. By all accounts, many of them from within PTI Karachi supporters, the party failed to campaign in the city or even try and develop a proper grassroots level network there.

Some lessons are in store for all parties post these local bodies elections. One: local reporters and political observers have pointed out that the PTI may have relied too much on its popularity in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to campaign in or focus on Karachi. The party’s local leadership in Sindh and particularly in Karachi had been boasting about getting a two-thirds majority — but based on what exactly? Their supporters are blaming complacency and poor organizational skills on the ground level for the party’s loss. The PTI should realize that a potent narrative helps only so much. Work on the ground is important. Two: the JI has been campaigning vigorously and has tirelessly focused on winning in Karachi. The party figured out the pulse of Karachi’s problems: governance (or lack of it), and led with this one slogan — not religion or morality or ideology, just service delivery. With a past record of delivering in Karachi when it comes to local administration, the JI was leading in social media pre-poll surveys as well. The lesson: in local government elections, people prefer governance to ideology or abstract narratives. Three: the MQM should not have boycotted these elections. The PPP learned a lesson through the hard way after it boycotted elections in 1985. It is never wise for any political party to stay out of the system completely like this. Four: the PPP must now realize that if it does indeed get its mayor in Karachi — which seems to be its main goal — it has to earn the trust. Sloganeering is all well and good but the people of Karachi are tired and angry and there is a potent sense of neglect in a city that feels it has only ever given and never quite gotten anything back.

What happens now essentially depends on whenever the final Karachi result is announced and the negotiations that will start right after. In fact, they have already started. Statements from the PPP suggest they are willing to form the government in Karachi along with the JI. But will the PPP be willing to hand over mayorship to the JI? That seems unlikely. Will the JI be willing to give up mayorship? That seems even more unlikely, given that Hafiz Naeemur Rehman has been slogan, message and promise as far as the JI is concerned. Will we then see a PTI-JI alliance instead? There have been stranger bedfellows than that. But the PPP, which has seen this as a do-or-die election, will try its absolute utmost to ensure it retains the majority. The MQM’s absence may eventually be felt by all parties.