How will MQM fare in its first general elections without Altaf?

The All Pakistan Muttahida Students Organisation, the force behind the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), has turned 40 today, and the party is set to contest its ninth general elections this year — its first without Altaf Hussain, the pivot who ran the party for around three decades with the carrot and stick approach.

Besides leadership crisis and fallouts, the party faces the challenge of selling its narrative to the public to seek votes. It seems to be in a position that is worse than its starting point. It has even lost its founding leader.

The News interviewed Dr Farooq Sattar, chief of the MQM-Pakistan’s PIB Colony faction and the man who perhaps saved the party from a complete ban on August 22, 2016, when the state authorities apparently decided to push Altaf off the political map, finally.

Though Sattar succeeded in maintaining the oxygen supply to the MQM, he failed to keep himself behind the steering wheel and, eventually, the party split once again. He said that had he handled some of the matters in a better way, the situation would have been different.

The self-proclaimed vanguard of Mohajirs in Sindh, the MQM was founded on the demands of getting the Urdu-speaking community their rights and fair share in resources. It failed to do so. The quota system that it opposed as one of its primary objectives is still in place.

Still, it became a mainstream political party and emerged as the third largest party in the country’s parliament. However, the way it opted to maintain its sway, especially in Karachi, cost it terribly.

In the current scenario, having lost its grip over the metropolis in the past two to three years, the MQM struggles to run for the elections. The Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP), consisting of those who were once with the MQM, is the Muttahida’s biggest competition.

“It was exactly the same pattern in 1992,” said Sattar. “People were joining the MQM-Haqiqi in flocks. But the elections cleared many things. Haqiqi was not able to prove that its electoral value was better than its nuisance value.”

The MQM’s current infighting, however, “gave some of the people leaving us a civilised excuse. Otherwise, it would have been allegations of ties with RAW or Altaf. The whole excuse was a cover, because though the chances of the PSP making it to power are bright, we should not have given them this opportunity”.

When asked why the party always demands a separate province for Mohajirs before the elections, but never after, Sattar said: “Even if we, the PIB Colony and Bahadurabad factions, were to unite, we may only be able to gain 14 or 15 of the 21 National Assembly seats in Karachi. This way we can never make the majority in the Sindh Assembly. Ultimately, we shall have to repeat the same narrative.”

Considering his political experience spanning more than 35 years, Sattar did a little “soul-searching” and found out that “we have suffered only losses, and have even lost the founding leader. People would not be buying us if we could say that this time round we shall achieve all our rights and there would not be any China-cutting or [criminal] activities”.

So, he added, “we resolve that we have dedicated ourselves to making new provinces in the country; at least 20 administrative units, with at least three in Sindh, but not on the basis of ethnicities, but for better governance. Even the PSP has to make a concrete offer when it asks for votes”.

When he was told of the perception that while his faction lost the deal with the establishment, his rival group had struck one, Sattar strongly rejected it. “On the night of August 22, 2016, I was taken into custody by Rangers officials. I was only asked to identify some of the guys in the video of the incident that occurred earlier that day.”

Later on, he learnt that “either the then army chief Raheel Sharif or interior minister Chaudhry Nisar had phoned the Sindh Rangers director general Bilal Akbar and asked him to release me and believe me for what I have to say before the public”.

He, however, is not sure about his fellow party members. “I was asked by some friends to merge the party with the Mustafa Kamal-led PSP to form a new party. I was persuaded that our woes will then come to an end. I was ready for the merger, but Kamal ruined the deal with his comments at the news conference that hurt my party workers.”

It was then that Sattar took a stand against “political engineering in Karachi” and wrote a letter to the army chief. “And my gut feeling is that I am being punished for what I did on November 9 [last year] to end the merger within 24 hours.”

He said he has never tried to malign state institutions for political gains. “But what I see is that there are attempts to minus the MQM from the political scenario. I had thought that the only irritation between the MQM and the establishment was Altaf Hussain, and that a future without him could have been smooth. But in reality, it was on the contrary.”

Talking about Pakistan’s “complex” politics, Sattar said Balochistan’s politics seems to be more influenced by the establishment than that of Karachi. “We [the MQM] may be anti-establishment, but we are not anti-state. We have to do politics in a responsible way. It is also the responsibility of the people who are watching Karachi very closely.”

He said that political engineering’s benefits can be short-lived at best, “but for sustainable peace and stability, it is quite important for Pakistan — a neglected multilingual city, undercounted, underrepresented — that the sense of deprivation, fast turning into a sense of alienation and isolation, be stopped”.

He said that the minus-one formula alone is not going to heal the wounds. “All the pieces need to be brought together. If this melting pot is not allowed to melt, it can prove lethal to the harmony and integrity of Pakistan.”

When it was pointed out that he seems to be on the losing side in the infighting and that the split does not appear to be beneficial to either faction, Sattar said: “According to the Islamabad High Court’s interim order, I am the convener of the party and it is registered in my name as of February 5.”

He said the Election Commission of Pakistan’s decision of recognising Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui as the party leader has been suspended. “The rein of power, however, is still in the hands of the Bahadurabad group. And I feel that we have to move beyond this legal battle. We have to reunite; it is inevitable.”

But he sees some problems: “If we go by the way of the Bahadurabad faction’s proposal, there will be three party heads: I and Siddiqui, who will award party tickets for the upcoming elections, and Amir Khan or Kanwar Naveed Jamil, in whose name the party will be registered.”