EDITORIAL: Following weeks of a campaign marked by recriminations and unpredictably, Barrister Murtaza Wahab has won the race for Karachi mayor — a first for his party, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). In the run up to the election Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) candidate Hafiz Naeemur Rehman had claimed to have an edge over PPP as the PTI with its 61 union council members had pledged to support him. But on the day of reckoning 30 PTI members failed to show up to vote.
Wahab backed by his party’s PDM allies, the PML-N and JUI-F, secured 184 votes against his rival’s 173. The deputy mayor’s position also went to the PPP whose candidate Salman Abdullah Murad bagged 173 votes while the JI’s Saif-ud-Din got 160 votes — 13 less than his senior partner.
Rehman has cried foul alleging that the provincial government had used bribes and coercion to keep 30 PTI members from casting their votes. The reason for their abstentions, though, is not lost on anyone. The party is in disarray following the post-May 9 events. Its former Sindh president Ali Haider Zaidi and ex-governor Imran Ismael have jumped their party’s seemingly sinking ship. Another prominent face, Khurram Sher Zaman, has his own troubles.
Meanwhile, many others fearing arrest are in hiding. Curiously, nonetheless, Firdaus Shamim Naqvi, former leader of the opposition in the Sindh Assembly, under detention in a case related to the May 9 violence, was brought to the polling station but he decided not to cast his vote. The reason is said to be that it would have meant losing his assembly seat. Not a good enough explanation unless he was willing to give up that seat when he contested the union council election. Anyways, nothing in the current political scenario is straightforward.
Refusing to accept the results, the JI has urged the Election Commission to declare it “null and void” and call fresh election, and declared Friday as a ‘Black Day’, staging protest demonstrations all across the country. Rehman, who is also JI’s Karachi emir, has vowed to challenge the provincial government’s local government law provision under which a mayoral candidate does not require a simple majority of total votes, 184 to be precise — the PPP is short of that mark by 11 votes — in order to get elected.
Good sense suggests that the JI accept the reality and stop acting as a spoilsport. As per the existing law, Murtaza Wahab has won fair and square. It is time for him to address the city’s myriad problems. He has previously served as the city administrator, but that was different. Now that he is an elected mayor Karachi has after a long interregnum those who call the city their home have very high expectations of him.
Hopefully, with the added advantage of having the backing of his party’s government in the province, Wahab, a former spokesperson for the Sindh government, will be able to deliver for all living and working in this city, which has an unfortunate history of ethnic/sectarian killings and bomb blasts. Karachi, a city of teeming millions, has suffered far too much and for too long. Its entire civic infrastructure is in disarray, so to speak. Fortunately, however, Wahab appears to have the healing touch to turn disagreements into agreements and quarrels into cooperation.
That Karachi has always needed an empowered and accountable mayor is a fact. The Karachi mayoral elections appear to have thrown up a leader in the shape of Wahab who seems adept at gaining greater powers from the Sindh government as well as the federal government.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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