Daily Times

Now that the neck-to-neck fight over the top office of Karachi’s local body is over and PPP’s Murtaza Wahab has finally achieved his lifelong dream of becoming the mayor of the city that never sleeps, it would only be logical to talk about his plans. After all, overcoming innumerable obstacles, the toughest of which might have been just as determined contender from Jamaat-e-Islami, was only part of the journey.

The far more important half awaits Mr Wahab as he tightens his shoelaces to assume the mantle of leadership. While he may have run the city bureaucratically in the past and taken great pride in his Neighbourhood Improvement Project, there still remain many a shortcoming when it comes to the availability of drinkable water and the unresolvable drainage issues. For too long, Karachi’s civic issues have been gathering dust in some far-off corner as ministers and bureaucracy continued to play their own angles. In order to become great again, the industrial lifeline of the country needs a determined mayor who has been empowered to run all departments.

This is something the new mayor has repeatedly sighed over in the past in his reservations against federal and cantonment control over more than half of the 17 administrative agencies. That the PPP-led provincial government would have to sit down with its allies in Islamabad to carve out a path that ensured the much-talked-about incharge actually holds power cannot be stressed enough. For now, the dye has been cast and history rewritten. Under a new brand of leadership that has its eyes set on a bottom-up approach, PPP has elected a historic body with representation from women, minorities, labourers, farmers, and the khawaja sira communities. How this seemingly progressive group would shoulder its responsibility of prioritising the interests of the masses remains to be seen.

Of course, the celebrations of Karachi returning to a system that ought to deliver could have avoided the bittersweet tinge had the polls not been mired by violent clashes and heated controversies. But one can always write about the art of losing gracefully and how courts exist as a much better avenue for such grievance on another occasion. *