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| India-Pakistan |
| Liberal forces may align but for now PPP and MQM apart |
| 2007-04-26 |
| I dunno why, but this idea never even occurred to me. John, do you have an opinion? The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has not discussed any political or electoral cooperation with the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) so far, said the Benazir Bhutto-led party’s vice chairman Makhdoom Amin Fahim Wednesday. “As far as the factual position is concerned, the PPP has not initiated even informal discussions with the ruling MQM on post-election cooperation,” Fahim told Daily Times in answer to the question Wednesday. A leader of the MQM was recently quoted as saying that there had been informal talk between the two parties on these matters. In fact, it is too early to comment on the PPP’s electoral policy, added Leader of the Opposition in the Sindh Assembly Nisar Khuhro, also of the PPP. “We want free and fair elections without any delay. There is no guarantee of transparency in the elections,” he said, adding that this was the real issue. Reports of an electoral adjustment between the two parties have irked PPP workers in Karachi and Hyderabad, strongholds of the ruling MQM. The PPP is the single largest party of Sindh province and rural Sindh is its stronghold. The MQM has made up its mind, however, to contest the elections from all over Sindh and it recently accommodated rural Sindh’s figures in its organizational set-up and parliamentary politics. Sources in the MQM and the PPP said that the two are rival parties. Since the 1970s and in 2005, the PPP has been the third choice of the people of Karachi whose majority votes were divided between the MQM and political Islamist parties. The MQM is the single largest party of the ruling coalition in the province and now its leadership are eyeing the slot of chief minister in the next political set-up. However, the PPP’s Sindh general secretary Nafees Siddiqui is looking at the idea of an alignment of liberal and progressive political parties at a different angle. Unlike some stalwarts of his party, he acknowledged that the MQM was among the country’s tolerant democratic forces. Siddiqui lost to the MQM’s candidate in the bye-election to a vacant seat of the National Assembly from Karachi. He had accused the MQM of rigging in the election but according to him that was an election issue and hence was over. “I agree with critics that the MQM is with the ruling establishment, but the MQM, PPP, ANP and Balochistan’s nationalist parties may be natural allies in the context of global politics,” he said. “Don’t look at this in the context of the local politics of Sindh.” An idealistic Siddiqui said that under a new realignment, all the liberal parties could be in one camp against the extremists. Karachi-based MNA Fauzia Wahab of the PPP faced stiff opposition from senior party members when she raised the proposal of a working relationship with the MQM at a party meeting at the People’s Secretariat. Supporters of an MQM-PPP working relationship lack backing in the PPP’s decision-making bodies which is why the proposal has yet to brought on to the party’s agenda at the level of the central executive committee or federal council. |
| Posted by:Fred |