Daily Times

While Zafar Ali Shah — the PML-N contender for mayor of Islamabad — says his defeat from Union Council-30 was a ‘plot’ chalked out by his own party men, an Ahl-e-Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ) associate claimed the returned independent candidate, Chaudhry Mohammad Naeem Ali, could win due to the active support of his group. Qasim, who writes for an Urdu daily, also posted a post-victory photo on Facebook snapping ASWJ’s local leaders on the stage with the winning candidate. According to a report, the “popular candidate” was voted in by many workers of the PTI, PPP, PML-N and even members of the Christian community due to his personal relationships. However, the ASWJ was at the forefront.

In the commercial capital, away from Islamabad capital, the party did not have to solely rely on independent candidates. A recent news report informs the Pakistan Rah-e-Haq Party (PRHP), the sectarian group ASWJ’s political front, has bagged nine seats in the city and 40 of its backed candidates too have succeeded. Though the Majlis-e-Wihdatul Muslimeen failed to win any of the three seats, where it had fielded its candidates, the group’s support to other candidates has yielded results. Sectarian politics were not the only strongly visible colour of the recently concluded local government elections, which have clouded the clear political skies of Pakistan. In Karachi, the results show a clear division on ethnic lines.

If the Urdu-speaking Mohajir community, housed in central Korangi and parts of the west, south and east districts, polled for the MQM, the Sindhi electorates, living in the suburbs, showed their loyalty to the PPP. Although, unlike the MQM and PPP, the ruling party at the Centre did not use the ethnic card openly, it turned out victorious in neighbourhoods housed by Punjabi and Hindi-speaking people.

The PML-N, interestingly, grabbed some Lyari seats but most interesting is the composition of populations in the union committees, which the party has won. Lyari has a sizable population from Mianwali district of Punjab and those favouring the PML-N over other parties were mostly from the community. The MQM failed to win even a single seat from Karachi District Council (KDC), which comprises the Sindhi and Baloch-speaking population. The PPP grabbed a majority of Union Councils from here, despite an alliance against it of former party leaders as well as some Sindhi tribal leaders. The PPP, once a federal party with strong representation in all four provinces of the country, has been reduced to being a Sindhi party, concur experts and so they think about the PML-N though the latter could never become a truly federal clique.

The city’s only ethnic community, the Pashtuns, opted not to elect the Awami National Party’s (ANP’s) candidates due to poor performance of the Sindh chapter besides other reasons. During my interaction for some stories last week, several experts and an ANP leader were of the view that lack of ethnic feelings was hardly a cause but there were multiple reasons, which made the Pashtuns vote for different political parties.

The Pashtun mostly favoured the PTI, led by a Khan, a party that is enjoying the support of the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which again shows that the community is not being spared from feelings of provincialism. The politics of Pakistan are taking a disturbing turn but neither the country’s intelligentsia nor the political parties seem concerned.

The PML-N has apparently never come out of the Punjabi mentality. The PPP can be explained with an Urdu couplet: “Ghar ko aag lag gayee ghar kay chiragh say” (the house caught fire from its own lamp). This is sufficient as its poor performance and reliance on Sindh has curtailed it to the southern province. Another party, the PTI, was considered a potential contender to fill the vacuum but it miserably failed. Now, almost all parties have been curtailed to their own ‘pockets’. The phenomenon is certainly disturbing. A few weeks ago, I met a diplomat from a European country and after almost an hour of chitchat on different issues when I asked what he felt was a negative aspect of Pakistani politics, he did not say corruption. “The disappearance of federal parties” was his brief reply. As the diplomat put it, politics taking ethnic, provincial and sectarian shape politics is not good for the health of Pakistan. If the constant dictatorial interferences in the political spectrum have dented federal politics, the poor performance of parties has boosted groups formed and raised on ethnic and sectarian lines. The demise of politicians like Benazir Bhutto, who were called “charon soobon ki zanjeer” (a chain between the four provinces), is also a major cause behind the decline. We do not hear such slogans so often as the loudest slogan turned out to be “aik Zardari sab pe bhaari” (one Zardari is stronger than all).

Cricket is believed to be the only bond, shared by all ethnicities in the country. But we are bent upon making it controversial too by keeping talented players from Karachi out of the national team. The case of wicketkeeper/batsman Sarfaraz Ahmed is much talked about. Selective justice through the raids of law enforcers will further strengthen the feeling of insecurity, which pushes the common man belonging to a certain caste and creed to the cliques claiming to be the saviour of his community. Federal parties cannot be built in days but an atmosphere can be created where federalism will take over growing provincialism, sectarianism and ethnicity. Are we ready to think on these lines?

The writer is a Karachi based investigative journalist. He can be reached at undisclosedtruth@gmail.com and he tweets @NKMalazai