The PPP is hopeful it would be able to rope in the Jamaat-e-Islami to get its mayor in Karachi

KARACHI: The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), which even to the surprise of many of its ardent supporters bagged the most number of seats in the local elections of Karachi, is trying to win over the support of the Jamaat-e-Islami to get its mayor elected in Pakistan’s largest city. But unfortunately, allegations of massive manipulations and irregularities in the local elections are spoiling and dampening the PPP’s celebrations.

It is not just the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), which is crying foul, but even the Jamaat-e-Islami is accusing the PPP-run Sindh Government of pre-poll manipulation by discriminatory and arbitrary delimitation and election-day rigging. The PPP’s uneasy ally at the center, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan’s (MQM-P) boycott of the polls has already put the credibility of the entire local bodies’ elections in Karachi and Hyderabad in doubt.

Nevertheless, the PPP is hopeful that it would be able to rope in the Jamaat-e-Islami to get its mayor in Karachi as announced by the party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari ahead of the polls. However, sources in the PPP admitted that the task of winning over the Jamaat is easier said than done.

“The Jamaat is demanding not just the reopening of election results of several constituencies but wants its own mayor in the city,” said a senior official of the PPP. “Although the two sides have interacted with one another, there appears to be no quick breakthrough in sight.”

The Jamaat-e-Islami says that the elections were stolen from it by the PPP as the vote tally on the “Form 11 and 12” did not match the results announced by the ROs, who all were PPP-influenced Sindh Government employees.

But the PPP strongly rejects these charges saying that local elections were held in a free, fair and transparent manner. The civil society, the independent media and the opposition, however, are not ready to buy the PPP’s position.

The PPP’s bigwigs mainly blame the PTI for what it calls the propaganda against the local elections. “In fact, it is due to their own party’s organisational deficiencies that the PTI lost the local bodies election in Karachi,” Senator Nisar Khuro, the president of the PPP Sindh, told Bol News. “The PTI didn’t field candidates at all the slots, whereas the PPP nominated candidates against each and every seat.”

“If the people of Karachi are not buying Imran Khan’s narrative, it is not the fault of the PPP,” he added.

Rejecting allegations of rigging and bogus voting by the PPP, Khuro said that there were only a few complaints on the polling day including the sad incident of PTI leader Shamim Naqvi breaking the ballot box seals.

“If the PPP had done any irregularity, why would we allow the Jamaat-e-Islami to win so many seats?”

Khuro said that the delay in the announcement of results this time around was barely two days compared to the fours of 2015 local elections. “During the Pervez Musharraf time, it took around 10 days for the results to be announced,” he added.

Karachi’s local elections witnessed a low voters’ turnout of around 20 per cent, compared to the 35 per cent recorded in 2015. The low turnout underlines voters’ growing apathy towards the electoral exercise which became controversial from the very word go due to the controversial delimitation of constituencies carried out by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on the advise of the Sindh Government. The opposition parties say that many congested localities of Karachi were given far less seats compared to their population, while the sparsely populated neighbourhoods got more seats. Even the PPP accepted this and wrote a last minute letter to the ECP highlighting the fact. But the ECP overruled the letter.

According to the PPP, Karachi should have been allocated at least 50-plus more seats as per its population, while the MQM-P says that the number of union councils should have been increased by at least 70.

Karachi observers say that the recent local elections will go down in the city’s history as the most controversial one and the local government emerging as a result of this exercise would lack legitimacy and be seen as non-representative by many Karachiites.