‘Sindh LB Polls Manipulated’

An interview with Firdous Shamim Naqvi PTI’s provincial party head

KARACHI: Former opposition leader in Sindh Assembly and one of the founding members of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Firdous Shamim Naqvi, who was recently booked for tampering with ballot boxes on polling day during the local bodies election on 15 January, says Karachi’s local bodies elections were manipulated by the establishment.

“There are many indications that the establishment played a role in these polls,” he told BOL News in an interview.

As an example, he quoted the performance of Jamaat-e-Islami in these polls. How could a party that had lost interest in national elections and confined itself to local politics could perform as well as the JI did in the local bodies’ polls without the support of the ‘powers that be’, he asked.

A civil engineer by qualification and associated with the construction industry, Naqvi was asked by then prime minister Imran Khan in 2020 to resign as the leader of the opposition in Sindh Assembly after he criticized a minister of his own federal government for gas shortages in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi.

Below are some of the answers he made to questions put to him by Bol News.

Q. PTI has suffered a defeat in local bodies elections in Karachi and Hyderabad. Has it lost its appeal in this region?

Firdous Shamim Naqvi: These results are not a reflection of the public opinion. These are manipulated results. I often remind people that only recently in a National Assembly by-election at Korangi’s NA-239, Imran Khan secured 55,000 votes while Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) could only poll 14,000 even though it had the support of all the political parties. Just one month later, we contest local elections and don’t win a single seat.

This makes no sense. If you conduct a survey in Karachi, you will find that PTI is the most popular party here. Everybody knows how the establishment handled these elections. Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) could not gather the courage to contest for NA-245, NA-239 or NA-237 in the national by-elections. If it was as popular as it turned out to be in the local elections, why did it avoid contesting those elections? Obviously, someone decided to make it strong, just as MQM was made strong in the past.

Q. There is a general sense that the PTI didn’t deliver for Karachi despite getting a massive mandate from here and Hyderabad in the 2018 elections…

FSN: First we should know what the PTI promised that it did not deliver. Karachi needed better law and order. It improved when PTI came into power. Extortion and kidnappings for ransom became things of the past. Secondly, the ‘disputed’ census was held six years ahead of its time, while usually census is held after every ten years. Thirdly, the green line project was started. Fourth, cleaning of Karachi drains, which prevented the city from drowning the last time it rained. Fifth, the K-4 water project, which started in 2007 but could not be completed until 2020. That project was re-started and redesigned and will be delivered during 2023.

Besides, projects to improve the Main Line-1 (ML-One) rail corridor and the Karachi circular railway were accelerated and delivered by the PTI government during the Covid-19 days. Urban development is the task of the provincial government, while the federal government is focused on wider subjects linked to the entire country. We focused on all these projects in Karachi because Karachi is the backbone of the country’s economy.

Q. Don’t you think that results of the local bodies elections reflect PTI’s poor performance?

FSN: Personally, I believe that all performances can be improved. Obviously, whatever we performed we are learning from it. But it is not a reflection of our popularity though.

Q. Soon after the Karachi local bodies election results came, Imran Khan hinted at some organizational issues of the party in Karachi. So, is there any reshuffling or reorganization on the cards?

FSN: As head of the party, it is Imran Khan’s discretion. But as I said earlier, there is always room for improvement. Results were manipulated, which was also underlined by the Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) in its report. This has raised questions over the entire system.

Q. Is PTI working on any new strategy to attract lost votes?

FSN: It is not to recover our lost vote bank. It is to restore it by advocating counter-measures to stop those who are manipulating things, and to restore public confidence in the system.

Q. If the JI and PTI claims are true that the PPP hijacked the elections, why didn’t the PTI come at the second place?

FSN: The planners know that people of Karachi would not accept it if the PPP is given a total victory in Karachi. So, they managed the seats so as to bring the JI up at the second place. It was a gameplan; you have seen that the JI ran a personality dominated campaign which has not been its style in the past. It never believed in personalities.

The JI used a massive publicity campaign, including expensive ads on television channels. But the Election Commission of Pakistan has not asked them to provide details of expenses incurred on these campaigns. So, there are many indications that the establishment played a role in these polls.

Q. Is there any possibility of the PTI making an alliance with the JI?

FSN: At the moment we are contesting the issue of seats. Let it be settled first. We can ponder over it at a later stage.