By Murtaza Razvi

Of late, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) is the only political party that has been making all the right noises on national issues, starting from its unequivocal condemnation of extremism to the considered stance on the controversial National Reconciliation Ordinance. The mourning day observed this week across urban Sindh on the call of the MQM for the victims of the Lahore Moon Market terrorist attacks was but a call for unity against a common enemy so opposed to the Pakistani majority’s way of life.

A transformation seems to be afoot in the party’s maturing political orientation. It is fanning out of its stronghold of urban Sindh to reach out to the people everywhere, be it in Gilgit-Baltistan or the huge swathes of the middle class in Punjab. If it continues on this path of widening its public appeal by raising issues that affect the citizens in their everyday lives, the party can truly come of age and broaden its public appeal.

There is a growing awareness of the dreadful gap left in national politics by the PPP and the PML-N, the two largest parties, which seem only to retreat into their entrenched positions to the detriment of public interest and good governance. This gap needs to be filled by a third force seeking wider public support based on doing politics that reflects the people’s needs and aspirations.

It was in 1967 when such a gap between the ruling and the ruled first came to the fore in what was then West Pakistan: Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party sought to bridge that gap by transforming the social contract, and with it the political lexicon. Let’s not forget that Mr Bhutto, too, was groomed in the lap of the military establishment, but when his calling beckoned he rose to the occasion. His party became the voice of the silent majority that had not been heard. The Bhutto magic lingers to this day, though the spell cast by the party has considerably weakened as it was diluted over time in the hurly burly that characterised the party’s every stint in power.

If the MQM can succeed in widening its public appeal on issue-based politics today, it could rekindle the hope for better governance than we have seen in the past many decades. The party can do it because it has, over the past seven years, acquired the wherewithal for such a role. It has been a ruling coalition partner at the centre and in Sindh, besides having effectively run city district governments in urban Sindh. This has helped the party break out of the ghetto mentality which went into its genesis.

A new sensibility, coupled with responsibility and the subtleties of being on the other side of the fence – that is, on the ruling side – while continuing to voice the concerns of the underdog, is just the right mix that a party claiming to represent the middle class needs. Despite many misgivings that exist against the MQM today, and for which the party too has to foot some blame, the people are so desperate right now that they would be willing to give the MQM a chance to deliver where all others have failed. And on the delivery front, the party is standing on firm ground given the good job it has done in Karachi over the past few years.

But even before that, the political vacuum that has existed for over two decades now is one that has left many middle-class people detached from politics. The people are just waiting to give anyone a chance having an agenda that resonates with their own wishes, as in hoping against hope. It should be recalled that under the devolution of power plan promulgated by General Musharraf in 2001, the MQM was able to secure over 100 nazims’ slots in Punjab alone.

This was because there was a big disconnect between the Muslim League headed by the Sharifs, who had been thrown out of power in the 1999 coup, and the people’s expectations of a representative government. But later it was the Muslim League of the Chaudhries that became Musharraf’s new surrogate. The ruling clique’s feudal mindset and the MQM’s pro-establishment stance at the time culminating in the mayhem of May 12, 2007, in Karachi, when the then defunct chief justice was not allowed to enter the city hurt the MQM’s popularity in Punjab.

However, the people of Punjab have a short memory; if the post-1970 election results are anything to go by, they, more than Pakistanis elsewhere, have voted across party lines. This makes the electorate there a potent force, one that can be won over provided your politics remains relevant to popular sentiment which, in turn, a party committed to its convictions can steer in the right direction. Isn’t that what democracy is all about?

Consider, for instance, the MQM’s popular demand to continue the local government system after making necessary changes to the laws that administer it, rather than scrapping the representative system at the grassroots level altogether. The stance resonates with public sentiment not only in Karachi but across the board.

At a recent conference held in the high security zone of Islamabad, some 500 supporters of the local government system, including many nazims from across the four provinces, braved the odds of reaching the capital to push the government for not derailing the local government system. The PPP and PML-N’s stance on the issue is highly controversial if not outright unpopular. It is seen by the people as an attempt to strengthen the provincial governments’ traditional, feudal-minded approach to amassing all power in their big-brotherly hand.

As for the MQM’s position on local governments, it is this brick-by-brick laying of the social and political edifice from the ground up that can win the party wider public support. But a prerequisite for garnering a broad-based backing will have to be MQM’s credentials as a political force that is inclusive and national in its appeal, as opposed to parochial or regional.

In the months ahead, if the MQM continues to throw its weight behind the right gut feel that can give way to a wider public consensus on a given issue, like on terrorism and the NRO, it can enjoy national leadership in a fairly good time.

(The article first appeared in DAWNBlog.com Murtaza Razvi is the Editor, Magazines, at Dawn. The opinion expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of PKonweb)