Celebrations underway as MQM rejoices over massive election victory
MQM's possible candidates for Karachi's Mayorship Waseem Akhtar and Rehan Hashmi won the polls.
KARACHI (Dunya News) – Celebrations are underway and continue long into Saturday night as Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) rejoiced over its massive victory in the third and final phase of the Local Government (LG) polls. A crowd of workers in festive mood has gathered in Karachi s Jinnah ground while fireworks were also displayed for MQM s success.
The unofficial and inconclusive results were received for Sindh and MQM has been unofficially declared as the winners of Karachi. Some influential candidates of the opponent parties such as Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s Ali Zaidi, Jamat-e-Islami’s (JI) Hafiz Naeem ur-Rehman and Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) Najmi Alam failed to cause an upset in the elections.
The competition was never really a nail biter as MQM secured a landslide of votes winning 122 seats while leaving its opponents PTI, JI, PPP and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in the dust. MQM leader Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui stated that the party has won more than 85% of the seats.
The polls were held in six districts of Sindh: West Karachi, South Karachi, East Karachi, Korangi, Central Karachi and Malir. In Karachi there were 209 union committees and 38 union councils.
PPP secured 39 seats while independent candidates managed to win 28 seats. PML-N also managed to get 12 seats while JI won 11 seats PTI’s performance was unsatisfactory managing to secure only 8 seats.
MQM’s possible candidates for Karachi’s Mayorship Waseem Akhtar and Rehan Hashmi won the polls. Akhtar won from UC-11, Aqab Jacob line while another party candidate Saadullah won from Bhatonagar, Municipal Corporation Korangi.
A war of words had earlier escalated between the parties as MQM leader Dr. Farooq Sattar had stated that both PTI and JI will boycott the election at the last moment. Farooq Sattar said that JI and PTI tried their best to postpone the local body elections but could not succeed. He showed the concern over chances of PTI and JI boycotting the election.
MQM leader had also said earlier that their party will win with heavy mandate tomorrow and will get more votes than past.
PTI and JI leaders held an emergency press conference in light of the comments by the MQM leader.
JI Karachi head Hafiz Naeem ur-Rehman said that MQM is being faced with some tough time for the first time. He said that MQM will be the one to boycott if army was deployed at the polling booths.
PTI leader Imran Ismail said that MQM is in a state of panic. “Farooq Sattar is either under pressure or he has struck some deal somewhere”, said Ismail. He claimed that the people of Karachi will give their verdict tomorrow and mayor of the city will be announced with consultation between PTI and JI.
