KARACHI – For over 25 years, maverick political leader Altaf Hussain had aniron grip on Karachi, able to bring Pakistan’s largest city to a standstillwith a single phone call.
But much has changed in the last five years in the coastal metropolis of 20million people, and the transformation is playing out in the run-up toPakistan’s general election next week.
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The country’s three main national parties now campaign openly in theteeming, financial hub, once considered one of the world’s most dangerouscities and dominated for decades by Hussain’s Muttahida Qaumi Movement(MQM), even though he himself has lived in self-imposed exile in Londonsince 1992.
“Karachi is peaceful today,” said Shehla Raza, a candidate for the PakistanPeoples Party (PPP) in one of Karachi’s parliamentary constituencies. “I amgoing to bazaars (markets), multi-storey apartment blocks, I am getting atremendous response.”——————————
At the last election in 2013, the MQM won 16 of Karachi’s 20 seats, andcritics say they were aided by a campaign of intimidation and violence.
Some months after the election, a paramilitary crackdown transformedKarachi, sharply bringing down murder and kidnapping rates, while splitswithin the MQM’s leadership in 2016 broke the grip of Hussain.
Hussain’s representatives in London did not respond to requests forcomment. Hussain has denied charges in the past of exhorting his supportersto violence. He has said hundreds of MQM members have been arrested andkilled in extra-judicial operations.
Authorities say they have targeted criminals and militants irrespective ofpolitical affiliation, and brought down crime rates considerably.——————————
According to the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, at least 57 peoplewere killed and nearly 300 injured in violence in Karachi from January 2013until the election in May that year. This year, police say, just twomurders have been reported.
The change is palpable in the city – people throng to shopping malls andrestaurants until past midnight. In earlier years, the city wouldessentially shut down soon after dark.
With elections coming up, Karachi is festooned with party flags and postersand small neon-lit trucks scurry around the city with photographs ofleading candidates.
PPP workers installed billboards sporting the face of party leader BilawalBhutto Zardari atop the MQM’s former headquarters, an act that would havebeen unimaginable in previous elections.
The city’s current 21 seats represent a tempting prize for the main partiesvying for control of the 272 elected seats in the National Assembly. Theymay also be crucial for smaller parties hoping to play kingmaker if, asmany expect, the elections result in a hung parliament.
Nationally, polls suggest the election is between the opposition party ofcricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawazof now-jailed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, which hopes to win asecond term in office.
Both Khan and Sharif’s brother, Shehbaz Sharif, are among the contestantsfor seats from the city.
Also hoping for a strong showing is the Bhutto family’s PPP, which isrunning third nationally in opinion polls but dominates politics in therest of Sindh province, where Karachi is located.
The MQM emerged from the city’s university student movements in the 1980s,giving voice to ethnic Mohajirs, descendants of Urdu-speaking migrants fromIndia, who form the largest group in the city.
For much of the 1990s, security forces in Karachi cracked down on the MQM,eventually pushing Hussain to seek asylum in the United Kingdom.
Even from exile in London, Hussain controlled the city through a powerfulnetwork, a security official and several former MQM leaders told Reuters.
Then, in 2013, the national government led by then-Prime Minister NawazSharif gave free rein to the paramilitary Rangers for a sweeping crackdownon crime. – Agencies