MQM elects office-bearers

An exiled hardline leader of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement secured the highest number of votes in its intra-party elections to become its convener, MQM officials said yesterday.

Dr Imran Farooq, who is living in exile in London since September 1999, secured 12,672 votes out of more than 14,000 registered voters, Kanwar Khalid Younus, who himself was elected central coordination committee member, told the Gulf News.

The elections, held on Wednesday, registered a turnout of 91 per cent, results announced late on Thursday night showed.

Farooq is the most wanted MQM leader for whose arrest the authorities announced a reward of more than a million rupees in 1992.

When the authorities started a crackdown on the party in early 1990s, Farooq had gone into hiding, dodging the security forces and intelligence agencies for seven years before he resurfaced in London in 1999.

The police have more than 150 cases of violence and terrorism registered against him. He is considered the number two most important person in the MQM's leadership after Altaf Hussain, who is also living in exile in London. Hussain never participate in elections.

Younus said that all the cases against Farooq were fabricated. "There were false cases against the entire MQM leadership. Courts have acquitted most leaders," he said. Besides Farooq, the party elected six people as party's deputy convener.

They are: Aftab Shaikh, Nasreen Jalil, Shaikh Liaquat Hussain, Dr Farooq Sattar, Shoaib Bukhari and Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui. The party also elected a 25-member central committee.

Younus said MQM's elections were held in a most fair and transparent manner in which the organisation displayed its discipline and the strength of its workers.

The MQM, which dominates the urban parts of Sindh province, mainly speaks for the political and economic rights of Urdu-speaking people who migrated from India at partition in 1947 and their descendents.

In recent years, the party has been trying to throw its door open for other ethnic groups as well, but so far has met with little success.

Pakistan's leading political parties are holding intra-party elections to qualify for the October elections. The government has set August 5 as the deadline of intra-party polls. The parties failing to complete the process would be barred from running in the elections.

Leaders of mos parties, including former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's party, already have been re-elected for the top slot unopposed.