Although it is not clear yet whether or not Dr Farooq Sattar will join hands with MQM's Bahadurabad faction, it is crystal clear that the party would not be entering the 2018 election fray in a manner that has been its traditional hallmark since its emergence on urban Sindh's political landscape in the mid-1980s. The question therefore is: What will be the missing element in MQM's approach to this election as compared to those that it had fought in the past: the absence of its founder Altaf Husain from party symbols as well as his political rhetoric. It is more than obvious that the party is still struggling, albeit unsuccessfully, to reach out to its traditional voter in a confident manner because it has failed to arrest its slide the banishment of party founder and intra-party bickering that intensified on the occasion of March Senate elections had triggered. Its Bahadurabad faction now seems to have received a real morale booster in the shape of an Islamabad High Court (IHC) verdict that has upheld the Election Commission of Pakistan`s (ECP's) decision to remove Dr Farooq Sattar as convener of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan. The MQM-P stalwart had petitioned the IHC against the ECP decision to remove him as party convener in March this year. The IHC had in April reserved its verdict after Sattar's counsel and the respondents concluded their arguments. The court had initially restored Sattar by suspending the ECP order till it decided the matter.
There is little or no doubt about the fact that Sattar is still not coming clean as he says options to approach Supreme Court are open. "I don't want division of Mohajirs. But those who can unite Mohajirs are being removed under a planned conspiracy," he has been quoted as saying. His remarks that the judiciary cannot make anyone leader and it is the masses who choose their leader however indicate that any rapprochement between the two factions is not expected anytime soon, although the party convener Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui has urged the embittered leader to join him so that "we all can work together and face the numerous challenges and contest the upcoming elections". Sattar seems to have articulated a strategy through which he expects to rally most of the Urdu-speakers to his camp: a movement for the creation of 'Southern Sindh' province. Expressing optimism about the success of his idea, he has even advised new MQM rivals, former Karachi mayor Mustafa Kamal and his comrades, that nothing but a demand for the division of Sindh can brighten their electoral prospects.
Be that as it may, a united or divided MQM-P appears to have already conceded its space to not only Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), a party that is solely responsible for triggering the process of MQM's unraveling through a massive showing on Karachi's seats in the 2013 general elections, but also Pakistan People's Party much before the July 25 elections. Can't it see the writing on the wall? Doesn't it know that only a formal merger of both MQM-P factions can help the party put up any meaningful performance in the July elections? The situation requires it to recreate itself in order to remain relevant in Karachi where its influence seems to have radically diminished, if not vanished. All those politicians who had suffered at the hands of MQM's phenomenal but brutal rise and are no longer in this world, particularly the two Urdu-speaking Karachi-based seasoned politicians of national stature Shah Ahmed Noorani of Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan and Prof Ghafoor Ahmad of Jamaat-e-Islami, must be smiling in their graves, although both the politico-religious parties that had successfully maintained their sway over urban Sindh till the late 70s are ironically nowhere in a position to cash in on MQM's present woes in any effective and meaningful manner.