Not Quitting the Govt

To press demand for fresh delimitations, the MQM-P has chosen to tread the middle ground

KARACHI: The Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) is considering to quit the federal cabinet in protest over the failure of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) government to implement the party’s basic demands, several senior party leaders told BOL News.

One of the party’s basic demands was to conduct fresh delimitations of constituencies, which were not done and which led to the MQM-P’s last-minute decision to boycott the local bodies elections held last month.

Background chats with several MQM leaders confirmed that there was an ongoing debate within the top party ranks to quit the cabinet. However, the party does not plan to quit the ruling alliance at the centre.

“At this crucial juncture, when the country is at the verge of a default, quitting the government will bring more political instability to the country,” said a senior party leader, requesting anonymity.

“However, there is an ongoing debate within the party that we should express our resentment by quitting the cabinet of the multiparty government. This means that we will continue to be part of the PDM government, but will not be part of the cabinet,” he said.

At the moment, MQM-P holds three ministries in the federal cabinet. These include the Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis Affairs, headed by MQM-P convener Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui, the Ministry of Maritime Affairs, headed by Faisal Sabzwari, and the Ministry of Information Technology, headed by Aminul Haque.

On Wednesday, the Shehbaz Sharif-led federal government appointed seven new special assistants to the Prime Minister, taking the total strength of cabinet to 85, one of the largest in the country’s history, at a time when its economy is in dire straits.

Soon after the 31 December reunification of various MQM groups into a single party, its leaders initially considered quitting the PDM alliance altogether. But second thoughts started to emerge as the economic situation worsened with the passage of time, another party leader, also requesting anonymity, told Bol News.

The party’s senior most leader, Dr Farooq Sattar, is perhaps the only leader who has publicly expressed his desire to part ways with the central government. He expressed this while answering a journalist’s question at the party’s reunification presser.

“The time has come when we should quit the federal government, and not even look at the provincial government,” he said at the presser.

At that point, Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui intervened, and addressing Farooq Sattar, said that “time has not yet come to give a policy statement at this forum, Farooq bhai.”

The new year started with MQM-P’s warning that it may quit Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s coalition government if the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) failed to honor its agreement with the MQM.

Later, at another press conference in January, MQM’s Waseem Akhtar, in a seeming attempt to jog the memory of the ruling alliance, remarked that it was the seven MQM-P votes that enabled Shehbaz Sharif to become the prime minister and the PPP to get 10 ministries in the federal cabinet.

Earlier in October 2022, a delegation of MQM-P had in a meeting with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif expressed their serious concerns over the non-implementation of the agreement signed with the federal and Sindh governments.

On the eve of local bodies elections, the PPP apparently did try to delay the elections to appease its coalition partner by notifying the cancellation of earlier delimitations and requesting to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to postpone local elections scheduled for 15 January.

The Sindh government withdrew its election notification after a hurriedly called late-night cabinet meeting chaired by Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, and subsequently dispatching another letter to the ECP to that effect.

In the letter, the Sindh Cabinet declared that “all notifications related to the delimitations of the councils of Karachi and Hyderabad divisions, issued under sections 10(1) and 16 of the SLGA-2013 by the Local Government and Housing & Town Planning Department shall stand cancelled, and the LG & HTP Department may take necessary action accordingly.”

Obliged by this move, an MQM delegation led by Dr Farooq Sattar, visited the Chief Minister’s House shortly afterwards to acknowledge its appreciation and offer thanks to the PPP.

However, the Sindh government’s strategy did not work, and to the delight of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the ECP, after holding back-to-back meetings, announced that elections will go ahead as announced on 15 January.

Now, as the PPP and JI are engaged in a battle to sort out the disputed results of the local bodies’ elections, MQM-P has announced to push for the implementation of its long-standing demand for fresh delimitations of the constituencies by staging an indefinite sit-in at Fawara Chowk, starting Sunday.