MQM withdraws threat to government

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement, which last week abandoned the fragile coalition government, erasing its slim majority, announced yesterday it had patched up with Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, saying that the party would stand by him in the wider interest of democracy.

"The MQM has decided to continue its unconditional support for Prime Minister Jamali," Farooq Sattar, deputy convener of the MQM, told a press conference, raising the prospect of a swift convening of the Sindh Assembly.

The decision has been made "to save the democratic system and promote and stabilise it in the country," he said.

The MQM withdrew support from the Pakistan Muslim League Quaid-e-Azam-led coalition government on November 27, expressing its frustration after the authorities failed to act against the members of party's dissident faction, called the Mohajir Qaumi Movement, which controls several neighbourhoods in the restive port city of Karachi.

The MQM's decision came as a blow for Jamali and raised fears that it would pave the way for the fall of the new civilian government, which came to power with a simple majority of one vote.

In an attempt to save the government, the PML-QA leaders resumed negotiations with the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, the alliance of six hardline Islamic parties opposed to the United States war against terror in Afghanistan.

The MMA laid down tough conditions for its cooperation, including the demand that President Gen. Pervez Musharraf should quit his office of the army chief.

Sattar said that MQM's senior officials held extensive discussions in Karachi and London, where the party's exiled leader Altaf Hussain lives and decided that it should act to save the system.

The MQM's decision to sit in the opposition benches also triggered a crisis in Sindh province, where the party emerged number two with 41 seats in the 163-member Sindh Assembly.

Former premier Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party is the biggest in the Sindh Provincial Assembly with 67 seats. But without MQM's support neither the PPP nor the pro-military National Alliance could form a government.

While in three provinces, governments have been installed, in Sindh the assembly's inaugural session was postponed twice – last time for an indefinite period because no party was in a position to form a government.

Sattar said if the MQM remained "rigid and inflexible" in its stance, there was a fear of the imposition of the governor rule on Sindh. By supporting Jamali, the party wants to "block the governor's rule and wanted to foil the conspiracy against the democracy," he said.

The MQM has been asking successive governments to arrest what it calls the "terrorists" belonging to its breakaway faction, who bar leaders and workers belonging to the mainstream party, from entering several key neighbourhoods of the city including Landhi, Malir, Lines Area and Shah Faisal Colony.

Sattar said that the rival faction had evicted hundreds of families from their houses.

When President Musharraf ordered that the areas controlled by the rival faction be opened, his directives were not implemented, he said.

Nasreen Jalil, another senior MQM leader, however, said that the top government officials have assured that action would be taken against the dissident faction.

During the last 12 days, police say that more than 100 "criminals" belonging to the Mohajir Qaumi Movement have been arrested and all their offices including the headquarters called Baitul Hamza in Landhi neighbourhood have been sealed.

But Amir Khan, a central leader of the dissidents, says that more than 500 of his party supporters and their relatives have been arrested.

Khan, along with other senior leaders, has gone into hiding, accusing the government of being blackmailed by one single group. The MQM also urged Jamali to support the its candidate in the Sindh for the chief minister's post.