A bypoll is to be held on September 22 in one of the city's politically volatile areas, Orangi, on the provincial assembly seat PS-94, which fell vacant after the assassination of MQM's Syed Raza Haider. In the name of peace holding bypolls should be abolished.
Elections are the key democratic process, but it should be limited to general elections, and polls of local government. Such things as bypolls and referendums are a farce in our country. They serve no purpose beyond causing politicals strife, waste of funds and time.
All types of elections, general, local and bypolls are treated as if they were competitions in which winner takes all and thinks of him or herself as a victor rather than a person elected to serve the people who voted. In time, and if general election are held regularly, there is no doubt that electioneering will become a civilised and truly democratic practice. There is need for electioneering therefore but is there really a need for bypolls?
At present an election process takes us backward, to ancient Roman sport of gladiators: men trained to fight against other men or animals in an arena. It was a trail of strength, fitness, stamina. This analogy applied to electioneering scenario in Pakistan and is a perfect description of what happens. So while one needs to put up with it in general and local bodies elections must we be subjected to fresh bouts of the same every time a legislator dies and a bypoll is held?
Few bypolls are held because a seat was vacated because a legislator had won his national or provincial seat through some fraud, such as submitting fake degrees, or because as minister he had misused his authority causing misery and suffering to the masses.
In our country the reason for bypolls is death of a legislator. This leads to the suspicion that bypolls can be engineered by simply eliminating the incumbent legislator. Could there have been such a reason for the assassination of Syed Raza Haider? One cannot simply write off the suspicion as bogus because bypolls in PS94 are being held in a warlike zone that prevails in and around Orangi Town.
There is no peace here. Political parties, militant, terrorist religious fanatics, land and drug mafia, transport mafia, even what to the parched city, and last but not least police and politicians indulging in extortion. Politics, or rather democracy, hardly figures in any of these power struggles that beleaguer Orangi Town.
The forthcoming bypoll is not even genuine. Not all political parties are contesting. The major party in Sindh, the PPP, has chickened out and so have the religio-political parties. The star gladiators in this arena are MQM and ANP candidates. In short, everyone is treating the bypoll as a contest of strength only between two political parties in which other parties want no role.
There are five candidates contesting PS-94 bypolls. The MQM has fielded Saifuddin Khalid, the ANP Riaz Gul, while the other three candidates, Masood Alam, Zeenat Yasmin and Abdul Haq are independents. Both MQM and ANP are confident they will win.
In the last general elections MQM legislator Syed Raza Haider emerged victorious securing 79,634 votes out of a total 130,826 electoral roll. The ANP candidate had secured 959. It is doubtful if there will be a significant change in the results in the bypolling. To turn the table on MQM the ANP will have to win at least 80 percent more votes than it did in the February 2008 general elections. It is doubtful if the mood of voters could change radically in just three years. Weather the polling is free and fair or rigged is not an issue; the results of the bypoll cannot be much different from what they were in 2008.
It is also interesting to note that independent candidate Abdul Haq was Orangi Town Nazim and belongs to Haq Parast Group which is the local bodies wing of MQM.
The PS-94 is a large constituency stretching from sector-5 to sector 11 part of sector 11-E. It is largely a community of so-called Urdu-speaking people but includes also those who migrated from east Pakistan after it became Bangladesh in 1971. The MQM claims it as a stronghold. However there is considerable population of Pushto and Punjabi peoples concentrated in Mominabad and Faqeer Colony in the constituency.
Since MQM and ANP are partners with PPP in Sindh government, President Zardari directed PPP not to contest the bypoll. This gives the impression that President Zardari thinks the bypoll is an internal matter between MQM and ANP rather than a true democratic activity in which all legitimate political parties ought to have fielded their candidates. This is another reason why the forthcoming bypoll looks like a gladiatorial contest rather than a democratic exercise.
Neither party is interested in bringing peace to Orrangi Town. They are merely using the troubles of Orangi as a lever in their power struggle. When all hell broke loose in Orangi after the assassination of Syed Raza Haider, it was to the non-political groups that people turned for help to bring normalcy to Orangi.
Since the gangsterish politics of MQM and ANP command attention of the press and electronic media, one tends to forget that in Orangi Town there is also a strong social welfare base created by non-political groups particularly through the Orangi Pilot Project of the late Abdul Hamid Khan. His project has not been imitated in any other part of the city. It spawned self-help in housing, education and health for which Abdul Hamid Khan, with his charismatic leadership, was able to rope in architects, civil engineers, teachers, educationists and doctors of standing to guide and advise on the project. These experts were not Orangi residents, they hailed from trading community of Saddar to the affluent professionals living in posh areas of Karachi. Everyone pitched in. Orangi politics has proved to be a divider of community rather than a unifier.