Daily Times

KARACHI: Highly charged by-elections in Karachi’s PS-114 constituency scheduled to be held on July 9, 2015 as the political pundits are predicting that the results would shape the way for the upcoming general elections next year.

In by-polls 27 candidates are contesting; prominent among them are Senator Saeed Ghani of Pakistan Peoples Party, Kamran Tessori of MQM-Pakistan, Najeeb Haroon of PTI, Ali Akbar Gujar of PML-N and Zahoor Ahmed jadoon of JI.

Traditionally the seat has won by MQM, 1990, 1993 and 2008 elections. However, PPP’s Saeed Ghani is much confident to change the history especially by taking advantage of the internal crisis of MQM.

Saeed Ghani has the benefit of his residence being in the constituency and PPP is also in power in sindh besides ANP and Pakistan Sunni Tehreek have announced to support PPP after meeting the PPP leaders. Ghani also met Punjabi-Pakhtun Ittehad’s chief Malik Ayub Awan to win the group’s support and many of big local names and castes like Malik’s, Aawan’s, Qureshi’s, Chaudhri’s are along with him. Moreover being a resident of same area he has done a lot of work for the area.

After visiting the constituency of PS-114 by Imran Khan ; Chairman PTI in order to start the campaign for by-election for PTI’s candidate Najeeb Haroon whose position has been rather strong.

Even PTI has gained the support of Irfanullah Marwat who had already won the election for the same seat in 2013 general elections as a PML-N candidate, but his victory was called off by election tribunal in July 2014.

Sardar Abdul Rahim has also announced his support for PTI who had been a member of the Sindh Assembly for a number of times in the past while he was part of the PML-N, More over PTI candidate Najeeb Haroon has comforted by PML-F chief Pir Pagara a day earlier.

While PTI is blaming the PPP in utilizing the government sources to support their candidate but Saeed Ghani has denied and said the things are being done properly and smoothly and no government support is being used for election campaign.

Despite winning thrice at the same seat MQM Pakistan’s candidate Kamran Tessori has to face alienation for not being from the same area and MQM internal crises will also create problems for him since his political carrier of changing political parties has also made him a weak candidate although MQM Pakistan has good voter bank in the same constituency. Tessori is also said to have been involved in illegally occupying 400 plots in compensation of Lyari Express way effecties in coordination Salman Fareedi PD which is will also likely to dent the MQM.

Despite Ali Akbar Gujjar has good political reputation in Karachi but since it was the seat of PML-N so now it is a challenge for Akbar to regain the seat and he also has the advantage of caste as Manzoor Colony and Azam Basti have thousands of Gujjar family votes which he may obtain.

The corner meetings and rallies are being held on daily basis from all candidates but Saeed Ghani is in rather active among all others blaming each other during corner meetings but pleasant on the ground.

On the other hand The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) is facing new hurdles in plotting the new biometric electoral voting system in the upcoming PS-114 by-elections, in order to make them more transparent . Electronic voting machines and biometric voting machines have to be used as a pilot project during this year’s by-elections across the country.

Published in Daily Times, June 22nd, 2017.