Karachi as a city is in a state of advanced physical and social decay. Several people are killed in either gang violence, targeted killings or by police and Rangers daily and the parties that should work together for its betterment are too busy trying to divide it into their own turf to bother with citizens. The MQM and PPP are at constant loggerheads and despite their claims of inclusive government, play ethnic politics because otherwise they do not have the performance credentials or the credibility to garner votes. This is why Imran Khan’s popularity has not dimmed in Karachi, where he held a large rally last month. More than the PPP, Imran Khan represents an electoral threat to the MQM and its monopoly on Karachi. The MQM began essentially as a mafia and it continues to sustain itself through extortion and organised crime. Its heavily armed party cadres were well known in the 1990s for acts of terrorism and gang violence. Indeed, Karachi’s descent into brutal ethnic and civil conflict is largely the result of the MQM’s reliance on violence to stake its claim to the city. A party whose members proudly claim it has the lowest extortion rates in the city does not have any moral high ground. On the other hand the PPP is well known for relying on ethnic Sindhis and the Bhutto name to maintain its Karachi presence. In government its performance is dismal: its modus operandi remains money handouts in rural Sindh, which is its base, coupled with entrenching its workers and supporters in the provincial bureaucracy, trade unions and semi-government institutions. In Karachi it has often been unable to do so because the MQM has such a strong grip on the city’s administration, but its recent attempts have brought on the MQM’s ire, as seen by the latter’s complaints about Karachi municipal authorities being brought under the provincial government’s control. The structural change allows the PPP to keep more of the city’s civic administration staffed by its people. The MQM’s focus on dividing Sindh into so-called administrative units is also to ensure that it is able to retain a grip on the bulk of the city’s bureaucracy. The PPP is unlikely to succeed in outdoing the MQM even while forming the provincial government, but its attempt coupled with the electoral challenge posed by the Pakistan Terheek-e-Insaaf (PTI) has made the MQM jump to prove its relevance, provincially and nationally. With local government elections scheduled to be held soon, the administrative structure of the province’s urban areas will be crucial in determining turf: delimiting constituencies in certain ways could advantage the PPP or the MQM. This could be one reason that the MQM decided to not only pull out of the Sindh government, but also create a ruckus in the National Assembly, demanding that opposition leader Khursheed Shah leave his position as he has “lost the confidence” of opposition parties. Of course the MQM is also no stranger to collaborating with the establishment. Targeting Khursheed Shah is an attempt to weaken the PPP in the Centre. This works for the establishment because the PPP’s support was crucial to the PML-N government’s survival this year and will be so in future. As usual the MQM is seeking to extract further concessions from the federal government, such as more control over the Karachi operation and a hand in delimiting local government constituencies in urban Sindh and is seeing whether the establishment or the elected government will be more responsive. The litmus test of this will be the position of Sindh Governor Ishratul Ebad. His resignation or continuance in the post will signal how far the MQM is willing to compromise since he has played the role of mediator in the past with former interior minister Rehman Malik. Bilawal and Shah’s recent intemperate words gave the MQM the excuse it needed to create this situation, but it may have happened anyway. This way the MQM looks more respectable than if it had simply walked out of the Sindh government, but no one should be under any illusions that the party is looking to hold on to its turf and head off challenges from the PPP and PTI. *