Zulfiqar Mirza group wins all 14 wards in Badin

Jolie · November 23, 2015, 10:29am

Re: Zulfiqar Mirza group wins all 14 wards in Badin

Structure of rural sindh is in front of us. Waderas who command entire villages, and hold the entire population as virtual hostages.

I used to work in the Karachi Stock Exchange, and when IPOs are released, only one application is allowed per NIC card. Private goons of waderas would come in from interior Sindh with bags full of NIC cards (belonging to the entire village), and would file applications for each card. The end beneficiary naturally was the wadera or saeen of the village/tribe. Thats how weak the local population is.

Through local presence, PTI can encourage some fearlessness among the local population, enabling people to eventually stand up and have enough gall to take a stand against their waderas. It will take time, but it can happen. **It happened in NA-246. PTI didnt win, but people did vote for IMran Ismail. **
Anyone who thinks that PPP enjoys widespread support in Sindh even now is mistaken. This is more of a coercion/helplessness vote.

I’m sorry, I disagree. Nothing really happened in NA-246. MQM got whopping 96k votes with lead of over 70k at the time when everyone thought that extremely damaging confessions of MQM’s mass target killers, money laundering case, Indian funding and polling under Rangers’ supervision would make the party extremely unpopular. But the situation didn’t even come close to that.

You simply cannot underestimate the power of racial xenophobia in Sindh. Neither PPP or MQM supporters/sympathisers would ever use their votes to punish these parties because there is a serious fear and mistrust of 'outsiders. In their eyes, all evils of PPP and MQM will always be considered “lesser evil” against the untested and untried “outsiders”. The ultimate boogeyman.

Imran was shouting on top of his lungs highlight MQM’s thuggery, mass murdering, extortion, capital flight and all MQM had to do was to call him a Punjab sponsored Trojan Horse in Muhajir areas working for a Punjabi Army with an aim to eliminate the entire Muhajir race, and NA-246 was in their bag. I listened to all Altaf Hussain’s speeches in the last days of NA-246 campaign, and I challenge anyone to prove that racial xenophobia did not play a role there.

Of course Imran Ismail got votes - there will always be public sympathy and some votes for PTI. It’s the most popular party, it is bound to have some support and votes in heavily populated areas but the question is can there ever be enough votes to get likes of PPP and MQM out of power? Nope. Not in our lifetime.

PTI’s resources are precious and time is limited - they need to pick and choose their battles. They are not the thakeydaars of eliminating fear politics in areas where they aren’t even welcomed to begin with. So need to pick fights that make the ultimate difference at bigger level. The current situation in Punjab is also becoming increasingly similar, but the only plus point there is that Punjab traditionally offers a really close competition/tough fight between two competing groups. Be it PMLN versus Independents or PMLN vs PTI. There isn’t a sense of ethnic blockade there.