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Zardari, Altaf Hussain agree to work together

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan People’s Party co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari has added one more to his bag of political allies with a dramatic reconciliation with the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, the party’s main rival in the Sindh province.

The reconciliation between the bitter political rivals has opened the way for the two to jointly rule Sindh, and possibly for the MQM to join the coalition government at the centre.

Mr. Zardari visited Nine Zero, the MQM headquarters in Karachi late on Wednesday night, where he and MQM chief Altaf Hussain said they had agreed to bury the past, “pardon, forgive and forget” each other and move on “for the sake of the future generations.”

“We have forgiven each other and also pardoned our enemies. We will not take our revenge on the people … we will avenge ourselves by changing the system,” Mr. Zardari said at Nine Zero. The MQM office gets its name from the last two digits of its telephone number.

Mr. Hussain, who lives in London, also made addressed MQM and PPP supporters gathered at Nine Zero by telephone. “Today we have started a new journey. We have forgiven PPP and they have pardoned us. We will work jointly to eliminate the urban-rural divide and for the rights of the oppressed to make Sindh prosperous,” he said.

The PPP and MQM, fighting for control of urban Sindh, were locked in violent confrontation in the late 1980s until the mid-1990s, when the PPP government under Benazir Bhutto bludgeoned the MQM into submission.

After that setback, the MQM clawed its way back politically, building an impenetrable voter-base in Karachi to become the city’s pre-eminent party that every government wants on its side.

Although the PPP has a clear majority in the Sindh province, the party has been clear that it is better to have the MQM on board rather than sitting in the opposition with the ability to paralyse Karachi, the country’s nerve-centre.

Information Minister Sherry Rehman said that the decision to take the MQM along was part of the national reconciliation that Mr. Zardari wanted in Pakistan, although the party is seen as a staunch ally of President Pervez Musharraf and was a coalition partner of the PML (Q) government.

The stage for the reconciliation between the two parties was set when the MQM was persuaded by Mr. Zardari to support the PPP’s candidate, Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani, in the prime ministerial election in the National Assembly.

According to media reports, the MQM may now get three ministries in the federal government and five in the Sindh cabinet, although nothing official has been said about this yet. The party may also get the governorship of Sindh.

Opinion is divided on whether the MQM-PPP reconciliation isolates Gen. Musharraf further, or if it will act as a bridge between the PPP and the presidency. The Pakistan Muslim League (N), which wants Gen. Musharraf to step down, fears a Trojan horse and has expressed its reservations about the MQM coming on board.

As a consequence of the reconciliation in Karachi, the MQM will join the PPP and other coalition partners in Garhi Khuda Baksh on Friday to offer prayers at the grave of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto on his 29th death anniversary.

The event has taken on a special resonance for the PPP after the killing of Benazir, who is buried next to her father in the same mausoleum in Naudero, in the Sindh province. The entire leadership of the party is gathering there, and the event on Friday is certain to be massive, with leaders of the ruling coalition partners also beating a track to Naudero.

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