Daily Times

It looks like the honeymoon is over for MQM in Pakistan. The directors have placed the last nail in the MQM’s coffin. The aftermath of the London-Karachi rift is visible in MQM, as the party is going through a lengthy episode of transformation which exclusively brings demise to this influential political strength of the past.

How a university-level student federation became Karachi’s most powerful political party is another case, but the way MQM ruled over the lives and assets of the Karachiites for a long time is really a matter which matters in making Karachi an unliveable and dangerous city of Pakistan.

This is the outcome of 2013 Karachi operation by the law enforcers with the intention to make Karachi a safe and secure place for its dwellers. It would be too early to say that the operation is finally concluded because there still exist many terror elements excluding MQM which have been functioning in the megacity.

Since last year or so, the city looks more peaceful than yester-years. Extortion and target killings have been wiped out to a great extent. There are hardly any violent protests, roadblocks and strikes which once had become a daily routine in Karachi. Trade centres, bazaars and educational institutions remain open after sunset, which once used to get closed before sundown. This is an excellent recovery in terms of restoring long-lasting peace in Karachi, and if it continues, Karachi can become world’s most attractive city one day.

MQM’s recent drubbing in the Senate elections delineates that the current party leadership is unbefitting to be elected to the upper house. If this trend continues, the party is expected to lose in the upcoming general elections as well

Karachi’s notoriety, which remained linked with MQM for a long time, is becoming mute day by day owing to party’s disrepair after sliding doors with its London based leadership. In this regard, Sindh government’s pronouncement regarding renaming all the government places/points/spots which previously was associated with the name of MQM London leadership should be called an exemplary move towards refreshing the restless souls of Sindh.

Karachi has begun to shine once again as the powerful MQM has begun to dilapidate. The recent shift in momentum in Karachi’s peace is defining the gist of the story that why MQM’s decline had become indispensable for the purpose to reinstate the undeviating peace in Pakistan’s one and only metropolitan city.

Since parting ways with party’s London based leadership, MQM’s local management is still in a state of discomfort and quagmire, which is resultantly playing havoc, as one of the highly mandated parties of Sindh’s urban settlements is on the doorstep of getting lost permanently from provincial politics.

Undoubtedly, all of this is happening owing to the engineered politics which has pushed MQM on the back foot.

PSP is something new for the people of Sindh, but it too consists of unchanged and tried faces. The notion of remodelling Muhajir community’s movement, presented by Mustafa Kamal and his co-workers, senses a moot and unaffected approach to cope with the situation.

Everyone wants to see Karachi as a peaceful city where locals, as well as visitors, can spend their lives without any fear. But the way MQM terrorised and enslaved its natives was a deplorable act and surely will take some time to reorder things and make all possible adjustments to make Karachi an inhabitable metropolis.

After MQM’s decline, the support of Karachiites would be with PSP and PPP, but it is also a recorded fact that during their two consecutive terms, PPP hasn’t done anything exceptional in Karachi.

K-4 water supply corridor, Green line Metro Project and intercity railway system are some useful projects which are in pending due to the negligence of the provincial government.

Karachi needs much more than these simple projects to come on par with other world metropolitans. Innovation, peace and sincere execution should be the agenda points of such reforms because a peaceful, terror-free and modern Karachi is a need of every Pakistani.

The writer is a freelancer based from Badin, Pakistan and can be reached at abbaskhaskheli110@gmail.com

Published in Daily Times, March 15^th 2018.