KARACHI: The Muttahida Quami Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P), one of the major stakeholders in Pakistan’s largest city of Karachi, on Sunday held a power show at the city’s iconic Bagh-e-Jinnah venue, where its leaders said the party would gain a thumping majority in urban centers of the southern Sindh province in Feb. 8 national elections.
The MQM-P is an offshoot of the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM), which has historically held sway in Sindh’s urban areas, particularly Karachi, where it claimed to represent the Muhajir community, which comprises Urdu-speaking Muslims who migrated from India to Pakistan after the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947.
The Bagh-e-Jinnah park, located adjacent to the mausoleum of Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah, is a venue that has often been used by parties as a symbol of political might that can help gauge public support.
Sunday’s public gathering, the maiden election rally held by the MQM-P since the recent unification of its various factions, was addressed by party leaders who previously led their own separate groups.
“The MQM-P will once again win with a huge majority in Karachi and other parts of Sindh,” MQM-P chief Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui said, while addressing the attendees.
Mustafa Kamal, who merged his Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) faction into the MQM-P last year, criticized the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which has been ruling in Sindh since 2008, for trying to turn the masses against the MQM-P by provoking them for a boycott of elections as urged by the party’s estranged, London-based founder Altaf Hussain.
“The people have given their decision that the sureties of the opponents will be seized in the election,” Kamal said, adding the PPP was attempting to cover up its poor performance by relaying the boycott announcement from London.
Founded by Hussain in 1984, the Muttahida Quami Movement first split into two factions, the MQM-Haqeeqi and the MQM. In 2016, Kamal, a former Karachi mayor, announced the formation of the PSP.
But Hussain continued to wield power over the largest faction, the MQM, and enjoy the loyalty of hundreds of thousands of workers and supporters until 2016, when his anti-Pakistan speech at a party meeting forced majority of his loyalists to part ways with the MQM and form a new faction, the MQM-P.
Over the subsequent years, the MQM-P further split into two factions owing to internal rifts. Last year, these factions, except of the Hussain-led MQM and the MQM-Haqeeqi, reunited under the leadership of Siddiqui.
With national elections just weeks away, the MQM-P is struggling to reclaim its lost political ground in the face of the election boycott call by its London-based founder and amid growing popularity of former premier Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, which secured 14 out of 21 parliamentary seats in Karachi in the 2018 general elections.
Recent victories by the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) religious party and the PPP in the local government elections in Karachi have further put the MQM-P on the defensive, grappling to woo voters ahead of the national polls.
With Bagh-e-Jinnah rally, Karachi’s key political party aims to win big in elections in southern Pakistan
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With Bagh-e-Jinnah rally, Karachi’s key political party aims to win big in elections in southern Pakistan
- This was the first election rally held by the MQM-P since the merger of its various factions last year
- The party is struggling to regain its lost political ground amid a boycott call by its estranged founder
Pakistan accuses India of manipulating Indus waters, warns of risks to regional peace
- India announced in April it was putting the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance over a gun attack in disputed Kashmir it blamed on Pakistan
- Islamabad says it has witnessed ‘unusual, abrupt variations’ in the flow of Chenab river, accusing New Delhi of ‘material breaches’ of treaty
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Friday accused India of manipulating flows of Indus waters in violation of a 1960 water-sharing treaty, warning that unilateral actions over the transboundary waters could heighten tensions and pose risks to regional peace.
The Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), mediated by the World Bank, divides control of the Indus basin rivers between the two nuclear-armed neighbors. India said in April it was holding the treaty “in abeyance” after a gun attack in Indian-administered Kashmir killed more than 26 tourists. New Delhi blamed the assault on Pakistan, Islamabad denied it.
The treaty grants Pakistan rights to the Indus basin’s western rivers — Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab — for irrigation, drinking, and non-consumptive uses like hydropower, while India controls the eastern rivers — Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej — for unrestricted use but must not significantly alter their flow. India can use the western rivers for limited purposes such as power generation and irrigation, without storing or diverting large volumes, according to the agreement.
Speaking to foreign envoys in Islamabad, Pakistani Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar accused New Delhi of “material breaches” of the IWT that may have consequences for regional stability, citing “unusual, abrupt variations” in the flow of Chenab river from April 30 to May 21 and from Dec. 7 to Dec. 15.
“These variations in water flows are of extreme concern for Pakistan as they point to unilateral release of water by India into River Chenab. India has released this water without any prior notification or any data- or information-sharing with Pakistan as required under the treaty,” he said.
“India’s most recent action clearly exemplifies the weaponization of water to which Pakistan has been consistently drawing attention of the international community.”
There was no immediate response from New Delhi to the statement.
Dar said this water “manipulation” occurs at a critical time in Pakistan’s agricultural cycle and directly threatens the lives and livelihoods as well as food and economic security of its citizens.
He shared that Indian actions prompted Indus Water Commissioner Mehar Ali Shah to write a letter to his Indian counterpart, seeking clarification on the matter as provided under the Indus Waters Treaty.
“We expect India to respond to the queries raised by Pakistan’s Indus water commissioner, refrain from any unilateral manipulation of river flows, and fulfill all its obligations in letter and spirit under the Indus Waters Treaty provisions,” the Pakistani deputy premier said.
Dar also accused India of consistently trying to undermine the IWT by building various dams, including Kishenganga and Ratle hydropower projects, which he said sets “a very dangerous precedent.”
“Alarmingly, India is now subverting the treaty’s own dispute resolution mechanism by refusing to participate in the Court of Arbitration and neutral expert proceedings. India is pursuing a deliberate strategy to sabotage the well-established arbitration process under the treaty provisions,” he said.
The South Asian neighbors have been arguing over hydroelectric projects on the shared Indus river system for decades, with Pakistan complaining that India’s planned hydropower dams will cut its flows.
In August, the International Court of Arbitration rendered an award on issues of general interpretation of the IWT, explaining the designed criteria for the new run-of-river hydropower projects to be constructed by India on the western rivers of Chenab, Jhelum and Indus, which Islamabad said vindicated its stance.
In its findings, the Court of Arbitration declared that India shall “let flow” the waters of the western rivers for Pakistan’s unrestricted use. In that connection, the specified exceptions for generation of hydro-electric plants must conform strictly to the requirements laid down in the Treaty, rather than to what India might consider an “ideal” or “best practices approach,” according to the Pakistani foreign office.
“Pakistan would like to reiterate that Indus Waters Treaty is a binding legal instrument that has made an invaluable contribution to peace and stability of South Asia,” Dar said.
“Its violation, on the one hand, threatens the inviolability of international treaties and on the other, it poses serious risks to regional peace and security, principles of good neighborhood, and norms that govern inter-state relations.”
