Daily Times

KARACHI: Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) Pakistan leader Farooq Sattar on Friday announced to withdraw his powers to nominate candidates for Senate elections in a bid to appease the estranged Bahadurabad faction. He also said that he was now willing to take four names for Senate elections from the opposing group.

Addressing a press conference, Sattar offered an olive branch to the party’s Bahadurabad group to end the current impasse over the issue of Senate tickets. He said he made the call to save the party from disintegrating. He said that the Rabita Committee would put forth four names for the Senate polls which he would accept.

“We will accept the four names given by Bahadurabad group,” he said.

Sattar expressed his concern on the matter that the Rabita Committee had removed him from the post of convener despite opposition in the party. He claimed that 22 MPAs were with the PIB Colony group, while 12 were with the Bahadurabad faction. He said the matter would have been resolved if Amir Khan had paid him a visit.

He announced that there would be an intra-party election on February 18, recalling that he had saved the party from disintegration in August last year.

He said MQM-P was registered under his name and only he could use the party symbol of a ‘kite’.

“After days of consultations, we have decided to offer those in Bahadurabad that they can submit their four names for Senate nominations and we will accept those,” said the party leader. Sattar said the issue was not related to his ego.

Referring to the party’s opposing group which emerged over Senate nominations, the MQM-P leader further said that the workers were with him and the perception should not be given that he was being stubborn.

Earlier, the embattled party leader had announced that he was dissolving the Rabita Committee, hours after members of the committee at the party’s Bahadurabad office said he was no longer the convener of the party.

The latest episode of infighting between two factions of the party started over the issue of distribution of party tickets for the Senate elections, with the Bahadurabad group opposing Sattar’s nomination of Kamran Tessori.

Sattar said that the issue was not over distribution of Senate tickets, but a conspiracy had been hatched to ‘seize control’ of the party.

The dispute between the PIB Colony and Bahadurabad factions had emerged on February 6 after both parties had taken different positions on the nominations of party members for the upcoming Senate elections.

On the other hand, Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan’s Bahadurabad faction on Friday changed the venue of its general workers meeting, which would be held at Gulshan-e-Iqbal Karachi.

Earlier, the meeting was summoned at Nazimabad Prayer ground, but the authorities did not permit the event.

Talking to the media, MQM-P Bahadurabad faction’s Amir Khan said that they had accepted all the demands of former party chief Dr Farooq Sattar and asked him to come, but he was not paying them a visit.

He said that they wanted to run the party according to rules, adding that the decision was in the hands of party workers.

Published in Daily Times, February 17^th 2018.