Will the Breakaway MQM Fly?

Asif Hassan—AFP

Mustafa Kamal’s ‘rebellion’ lacks a leader of stature.

Every time you sing the national anthem, you will begin by naming Mustafa Kamal’s new political party, Pak Sar Zameen, the enterprise for the batch of Muttahida Qaumi Movement rebels rallying behind the former Karachi mayor. They have decided to take the national flag as the party flag, knowing that this won’t wash. Both decisions, in fact, imply a trial balloon rather than the birth of a new party.

Kamal’s rebellion hasn’t really taken off the way he had hoped, even after half a dozen former MQM stalwarts joined his crusade during the first week. Their maiden outing was in a rented hall in Karachi, with a small audience compared to what the MQM can muster on a normal day. Kamal & Co. have not made an all-Pakistan dent on news channels. They appeared verbose without effect, unable to defend their tainted past as votaries of Altaf Hussain, the self-exiled MQM chief. But the MQM is in trouble. The revelations made in London have uncovered uncomfortable facts, challenging the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) government in Islamabad to action. MQM’s treasonous contacts with India’s RAW are out in the open. Most observers thus think that Kamal’s party has some kind of military strategic planning behind it.

The political parties, it seems, are not going to bite—especially the Pakistan Peoples Party, which may think that a similar crisis could be made to break out in its ranks. Its renegade leader Zulfiqar Mirza awaits the chance to strike. At the center, the PMLN is not surefooted in its equation with the military while being attacked in Parliament by practically all the parties present there. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s Imran Khan has predicted its ouster sooner rather than later. The cause is ridiculously bogus: the PMLN’s “decision” to let former president and Army chief Pervez Musharraf leave the country.

The new party lacks a leader of stature. Kamal, a good administrator while mayor of Karachi, is strangely subject to temper tantrums on TV, and babbles after losing his cool. Understandably, the party is not taking on the MQM frontally. Unless it makes a big showing with a mammoth gathering in Karachi soon enough, it is threatened with a tapering off. The “planners,” whoever they are, must act on the other front: bring the MQM to court and prove the charges that ensure a ban. That the name of the party is ill chosen will be proven when one is forced to say: Pak Sar Zameen is dead.