sadani
Minister (2k+ posts)
A Salam o Alykum
I have been thinking of writing my observations during the elections 2013 but was so disheartened by the results ( just like many of you ) that I even stopped reading newspaper , browsing political websites , watching political tv shows etc ( I think I haven’t yet watched any tv show after 12[SUP]th[/SUP] May ) , actually didn’t want to see the criminal faces of old hyenas rejoicing over their “snatched” victory.
Just a little background of me and my family previous political affiliation , hope I will not bore you.
I used to be a diehard supporter of MQM due to ethnic and family association , later joined Jamat-e-Islami student wing “Jamiat” and then realized the only true “ideological” party is Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf , so joined it and rendered my services from every aspect to party.
Since I’m currently based out in Dubai so flown back to Pakistan to cast my vote on 8[SUP]th[/SUP] May. On 10[SUP]th[/SUP] May my grand-mother died, we offered her funeral in ISHA Prayer and next day early in the morning at 8 O’clock , without even taking our breakfast me and my whole family was standing in queue on a polling station to cast our vote , in favour of PTI , in favour of Imran Khan. Relatives who were living in our home due to funeral went back to their home , just to cast their vote , my two aunties who flown from quetta due to funeral , the second thing which they were discussing after the demise of their mother was “regret of not being able to cast their vote for PTI”.
Here as I mentioned that my whole URDU SPEAKING family was “fanatic supporter” of MQM in past , my mom is a novelist ; she used to write ideological write-ups for movement , my father gone through some unfortunate incidents during security forces operations in Karachi because of MQM affiliations. We build our house in 1978 ( the same year when APMSO – All Pakistan Muhajir Student Organization was formed ) my uncle who was student at that time scratched a wall of house with writing “ Long Live APMSO” , and while we were renovating our house in 1999 , we demolished our whole house except that one wall which was a symbol of our affiliation with MQM.In short , this is the STORY OF CHANGE of a family who used to be literally mad about MQM , who were not only part of “Pakistan Movement” but also “Muhajir Qaumi Movement” but then joined “Movement for Justice (PTI)”
Anyway , in this blog I will be talking about my observations on election campaign , election day , election results , factors affected results , lessons which we should learn and in the end how to move forward.
My most of observations will revolve around electioneering in Karachi so I’m sorry if I do not talk much about elections in rest of Pakistan in detail.
Journey Started – Election Campaign – Participation from Abroad:
As most of the participants here are living abroad , so its not a difficult thing to understand that almost 80-90% of politically aware Pakistanis were in favour of PTI , they were extremely excited about the elections , the way the Imran khan was running election campaign it was so moral boosting for all of us. Sticking to political websites and watching 4-5 hours of tv shows on daily basis was a normal routine for these Pakistanis , reading and sharing social media posts , discussing Imran khan in their foreign company offices , raising funds among Pakistani communities , we were SO CONFIDENT , we were so PAKISTANI . Pakistani students/youth living abroad were more interested in listening national/pti songs than as compare to Bollywood songs , “kaptaan” 2 min trailer was more interesting for us than any other Hollywood blockbuster . I have seen Pakistanis listening PTI songs “ inshALLAH Naya Pakistan” in buses , gym , restaurants .
First time I have seen Pakistanis living abroad were acting like ONE NATION. Unanimously , Yes Unanimously we were in favour of PTI and Imran Khan , no one was Punjabi , Pathan , Sindhi , Urdu Speaking , we were ONE NATION. During the normal gatherings Pakistanis were talking about of how to reach Pakistan and cast their vote , can they get holidays from their companies , can they get PTI t-shirts , how can they raise more funds for PTI , how about arranging a MOV ( Multimedia outreach van ) for elections , how to convince more friends in Pakistan to cast their vote for PTI , everyone was so excited.
They Day I was flying back to Pakistan from Dubai.I took a cab , as you know most of taxi drivers in UAE are our pathan brothers , so when I got in taxi , he figured out quickly that I’m Pakistani and only six sentences were exchanged between both of us.
Driver: Saab , Pakistan se hen?
Me: Ji han
Driver: Saab , Elections me vote dalne ja rahe hen?
Me: Han
Driver: Saab dua kren ke Pakistan CHANGE ho jaye ……….. hum majboor ae …nahi ja sakta …werna zaroor jata ….vote dalne……… inshALLAH saab is bar bht ummeed he hum sab ko.
Me: inshALLAH , ALAH krey hamara watan aisa ban jaye ke hamey yahan aane ki zaroorat na rahe.
The day before when Imran khan fell down from lift , I was in a shopping centre when I saw this sms from my brother in Pakistan , and I was like stand still , couldn’t move an inch , didn’t know what to do , In SMS my brother wrote , “ IK fell down from lift , pray for him” and my tears were flowing like something happened to my family member. I didn’t want to visit geo or jang website or open my facebook account to check what’s latest news about IK , I was afraid of reading the news of losing of my leader but later my brother again sent a message that he is fine so I was a bit relaxed.
By the way , as I reached on airport and came to my waiting lounge , almost all the Pakistani passengers were talking about Imran Khan , about his health and of course in favour of him.
Elections Campaign in Karachi – 8/ 9 May:
It was quite , everywhere.
Not much transportation as MQM were giving regular calls of strikes due to attacks on their party workers. MQM workers were visiting homes to collect NIC from people ( for bogus voting ),People were making excuses , they did not gave their NIC .Here important point to note is that MQM workers does not go to Pathan/Punjabi/Sindhi/Balochi dominated areas of Karachi due to resistance issue , usually most of indigenous pakistanis keep weapons in their homes so MQM workers always play safe , they only subjugate urdu speaking community ,but IT WAS URDU SPEAKING COMMUNITY of Karachi who was resisting this time.
Since MQM could never think that COWARD urdu speakers can ever vote against them so they did not bothered too much about NIC collection.
Before proceeding further , I would like to tell you about how MQM have street level intelligence system in Karachi which can show you the amount of terror MQM put on people of Karachi. This will also help you understand the nature of “revolution” that occurred on streets of Karachi on 11[SUP]th[/SUP] May.
So this is a layout of every street of Karachi which has any entrance towards main road as MQM feel that this entry can facilitate their rival/enemies to get into their strongholds and capture the locality from them , yes you thinking right , this looks like a map of civil war facing city.
Now let me explain the points in diagram:
1-Barriers:
MQM installed them in the name of saving karachiites from street crimes , but actually these Barriers have two purpose , one purpose I have already explained in above paragraph ( to safeguard MQM strongholds from rival militant wings capturing them ) and second to “slow down” any possible police/rangers action against them. With barriers having keys with MQM persons , Rangers and Police forces cannot enter a locality with their vehicles easily , and that would give enough time to MQM militants to escape or hide .
2-MQM Daily Wagers:
MQM Daily wagers are young boys , usually teenagers who work for 100 PKR daily with free mobile cards , they usually sit near barriers and in continuous communication with their other street fellows on mobile , they continuously talk to other street members…yes continuous …….they also have pistols to avoid any circumstances. They keep an eye on mysterious people who might be workers/agents of their rival parties like ANP and MQM-H or Sunni Tehreek that can think of infiltrating into their borders , they also keep an eye on possible agents of security forces like police and rangers intelligence people.
Their another mandate is to see within their boundaries for any suspicious activity , do they see any boy from street houses going to Jamat-e-Islami convention ? do they see any street resident working for other party like PTI ? Do they see anyone openly talking against MQM or Altaf Hussain in streets ? If yes than their first task is to inform respective “unit incharge” , the unit incharge will check the severity of threat and if they find it very threatening act towards MQM or altaf hussain , they will first try to warn that boy/family by street crimes activity ( daaka , mobile snatching etc ) if that guys is turning very threatening and continuously attending meetings of other parties than they will put him in their “target list” and on “proper time” they will kill him ( another target killing in city by unknown people ).
So this is the CURRENT GROUND REALITY of Karachi , street level intelligence by MQM , now you can imagine that it was almost impossible for karachiites to run a proper campaign for Imran Khan or host any corner meetings in their streets. This was the reason that there was almost no election campaign by PTI in Karachi except one or two posh areas where MQM cannot install those intelligence wings on street to street basis (e.g; DHA )
Now as soon as I got back to my home , I started talking to my friends , family , neighbours , locality friends , relatives and it was amazing response , EVERYONE was talking that he/she will DEFINITELY cast his/her vote and that will be in favour of Imran khan.
Below here was my facebook status as my first reaction after reaching Karachi from dubai , On 8th May
“Since my visit in pakistan , i can sense the “tabdeeli” , everyone is saying that IK will win this time inshALLAH , in KHI apart from MQM threats people are willing to vote , all families are supporting PTI , but for me again the very important thing is WILL THEY COME OUT ON ELECTION DAY , Analysts are right , if turn out exceeds 55% its Imran Khan all the way , 100% no doubt whatsoever”
By the way I forgot to mention that there is a school beside my house and it was declared as polling station. So when I was standing outside my home before election day , I saw lot of people coming to us an asking if this is the same school for polling station and we said, YES this is the polling station for tomorrow. We saw some cautious faces , seems like searching for something , they came near school (polling station) , read the notice that this is polling station and very quietly they left.
There was unseen unity among karachiites , in fact a hidden unity , WE could sense it , MQM was unable to ……… we were lining ourselves for voting day , exchanging sms , encouraging each other. We were ready , Karachi was Ready for Big Day.
The Election Day 11 May:
I was very busy on a night before elections day due to funeral of my grandma , was very tired so sleeping unconsciously , my younger brother had his engineering final year exam next day so he got up early at around 6 am for studying but soon he started doing some Khat-patt so I woke up to see what he is doing , he was arranging decoration chairs and drinking water tank ( which we brought for family guests due to funeral ) in street , I asked him what are you doing and he said, “there might be lot of people on neighbour polling station so I’m arranging these chairs for older people , also I have asked decoration guy not to remove Shamiana as it can be very hot day” , I was very happy with his attitude and concerns for election.
We went inside as still there was couple of hours in start of polling. As our family votes were not in same neghboring station so we both planned to reach our polling station as early as possible to avoid any possible political clashes between political parties. Anyway , I went to sleep again , I woke up due to some noise , quickly I got up from bed and went outside house , and there I saw a HIUGE LINE of my locality people who I CAN NEVER imagine in my life that they will vote for anyone or will come out on election day , my brother was very excited and he cheered to me , “you see I was right , you can see the line , its huge and it’s still 30 minutes befor start of polling, we will win , MQM will be finished today”
There was only one polling camp nearby and it was of course of MQM. MQM workers were very busy in preparing polling cards for voters so that it can speed up the polling process. Some of the dumb MQM polling agents were very happy as they were thinking that of course everyone is casting their vote in favour MQM , they could never imagine what was going inside polling station. But I saw few experienced MQM workers , they were a little confused as they were not expecting such BIG TURN OUT and they were smelling something bad from it.
Anyway , me and my brother with other family members went to our polling station quickly , Again the same situation , we saw 4-5 polling stations in between , there was a huge line of people on all polling stations. People were quite , nobody was talking to anyone in huge lines where sun was scorching on our heads , sweating in huge lines but nobody was in panic , very calm , very quite karachiites were waiting for their turn. Everyone was exchanging words in eyes but no verbal words . We all knew that all of us are voting for someone NEW.
I saw lawyers (advocates) , engineers , doctors , daily wages workers in same line , standing like children in their assembly. I saw urdu speakers , Punjabi , pathans , balochs , sindhi all waiting for casting their votes.
Nobody knew the names of PTI candidates for national or provincial assembly , all they know is to STAMP on bat. This is Karachi attitude , pure 100% Karachi attitude , we never care for individual electables , never voted to them , sometime we do not even know who is MNA or MPA from our constituency , what we all know is which PARTY has won from our constituency , it was MQM for last 20 years , before that it was Jamat-e-Islami and People’s Party.
I went inside polling station and saw there was NO polling agent from PTI , there was only JI and MQM polling agents inside and that was the first time I thought PTI has done BIGGEST mistake , there was no watchdog. We karachiites do not need election campaign , we never required polling camps , we didn’t bother for vehicles that could take us to polling stations what ALL we require was WHO WILL SAFEGUARD MY VOTE INSIDE POLLING STATION. We fulfilled our promise to Imran Khan of coming out of homes and voting for him , but what would happen if there will be no one inside polling station to protect my vote.
As I belong to a politically aware family so I knew how important is to have polling agents inside a polling station, anyway I was very disappointed to see absence of PTI polling agents , By the way this was the first time I came to know who was the candidate from my constituency , I would have never bothered to know about his name but it was written on ballot paper.
Anyway , we came back to our home where neighbouring polling station was jam packed. All the day we saw people coming in flocks , coming out of their homes , it was like people from EACH AND EVERY house of our muhalla has come out to vote , I could see the aged people , young people , women , girls , students……… EVERYONE was OUT…. MQM workers were busy in nearby polling camp but now they were start FEELING that something is going bad.
Let me share my facebook status of 11:00 am election day.
“Me and My whole family cast our vote (6 votes) , inshALLAH!!!!!!!! ….btw Unprecedented Turn Out , Amazing , Lot of polling stations everywhere , you can find a polling station in each Muhalla due to which all familes are coming out and voting….. if this is the same situation in Punjab and rural areas , m damn sure it would a PTI day inshALLAH inshALLAH inshALLAH”
“In my neighbour house(polling station) , so far (11 am) almost 40% votes have been casted , seems like in cities turn would be above 70-80% easily”
“and you can easily see NEW voters , families , educated young girls , mummy daddy boys , sab voting today”
Important point to note from this status ( which is a true fact ) that in 2-3 hours of initial voting almost 40-50% of all votes were being cast , people were aware that if they did not go early than there might any bad incident and they might not get chance to vote so they all came very early and quickly cast their votes. I saw one of my friend’s family who again were very loyal to MQM initially , they went inside polling station , my friend came out and told me that MQM workers have now taken over the polling station and they are giving 4-5 ballot papers to a single voter and asking them to vote for MQM , since these MQM workers could not even think of disloyalty from urdu speaking community so they were not bothering to keep an eye on which party they are stamping , but as my friend said , “they asked my family members to vote for MQM but we stamped for BAT ” “In my neighbour house(polling station) , so far (11 am) almost 40% votes have been casted , seems like in cities turn would be above 70-80% easily”
“and you can easily see NEW voters , families , educated young girls , mummy daddy boys , sab voting today”
that was the people’s reaction on 11[SUP]th[/SUP] May, Karachiites reaction which has caused an immense recent panic in MQM.
Reasons Why MQM so easily hijacked all polling stations:
By the way I would like to highlight the reason why MQM hijacked ALL polling stations:
1 – There was no polling agent of PTI inside polling stations, Jamat-e-Islami made the biggest mistake of boycotting elections in Karachi , Only Jamat-e-Islami could keep an eye on MQM workers inside polling stations , due to dedicated workers JI had presence in almost every polling station in Karachi but as soon JI Karachi announced boycott of elections , JI workers went back from polling stations leaving no one inside apart from MQM workers.
2 – Police and Rangers were not present INSIDE polling stations , MQM workers were openly showing their weapons , they literally hijacked all the polling stations , made all the staff as hostage and then they were controlling the polling , but as I mentioned , they were not keeping an eye on stamping as they were quite confident that these COWARD urdu speakers can never think of going against them.
Voting Turnout in Karachi:
I am very sure that in Karachi , turnout was almost 75-80% , no doubt , absolutely no doubt.
Voting Finished / Counting Starts:
By 5:00 pm , as we could see all the people coming to our neighbouring polling station , we knew that almost 90% votes from our constituency have been cast. This polling station had around 900 registered voters and it was obvious that 700-800 people have casted their votes.
Votes are counted in close rooms but as MQM workers was very confident so they did not close any gates of polling stations and they were counting openly. Almost 30-40 MQM workers were standing in front of polling stations waiting for announcement of victory and celebrations. But soon something strange started happening.
Suddenly some MQM workers came from inside polling stations , extremely nervous , they gave few instructions to their fellow workers outside. Now Police and Rangers was asked to leave polling station as they entered in after closure of polling.
Since we know our neighbours quite well , so when the counting started I asked my neighbour fellow boy to see whose winning and let us know. He went inside the room , I received the sms from neighbour boy that “miracle has happened , we have counted 700 votes so far , 450 votes for PTI , around 50-100 votes for MQM , 10-20 votes for each other parties and independents ; counting is about to finished”
That’s where MQM workers became mad / crazy / worried , they asked polling staff to throw 2/3[SUP]rd[/SUP] of PTI votes to trash , start stamping on MQM and make sure that there is a difference of 25% to 75% in between PTI and MQM.
Two Important points to note:
1 – MQM had to put PTI votes in trash as if they did not do it , MQM additional fake votes would sum up to more than total registered votes , meaning a turnout of 150%-175% , so in order to keep it under 100% , they need to not only increase MQM votes but to also decrease PTI votes , not to mention that there was no one from PTI side as polling agent at the time of counting and no police/rangers were present inside.
2 – MQM workers casted fake votes almost 3 times of PTI votes , since it was taking a bit longer time as polling staff has to write something on ballot paper for showing it as a legal ballot paper and put a thump impression on it as well , so when local MQM workers were inquired by central election office of MQM about the results , in panic they asked polling staff to stop putting stamps and JUST WRITE A WHOLE FIGURE depicting MQM win , staff asked how many votes and MQM dumb JAHIL workers told them just write 1 lac 50 thousand , 1 lac 90 thousand , 1 lac 40 thousand whatever.
Here I want to write the exact words of MQM worker who came out from inside polling station towards his fellows who were standing outside and he said , “ yar they all took voting cards from US but they ALL voted for BAT “ and they all freaked out .
We all locality people could now see the rigging happening inside polling stations , we saw rangers and police sharing dirty jokes , having tea outside polling stations during counting ( who were supposed to protect our votes ) , even policeman knew whats going on , Rangers knew whats going on inside but they did not want to take up fight with MQM , how could we unarmed people do anything after such reaction of security forces.
We, We the people of Karachi Won the battle on 11[SUP]th[/SUP] May against fascism and tyranny but we were made to lose by COWARD security forces , Ineffective Election commission and BIASED judiciary.
On election day it people of Karachi were fighting against not only MQM but also against coward security forces , election commission and judiciary , As I told , We won the battle against MQM , but we lost against election commission/forces/judiciary.
We karachiites proved that we love you Imran Khan , We are with you , We are with PTI , we are not power hungry people , we do not vote for ethnic , caste , sectarian basis . We didn’t even know the names of your candidate , but we came out to vote for you , you told us from Hospital bed that “ALLAH ne aaj tak us qaum ki halat nahi badly jisne aapni halat khud badalne ka na socha ho” ,
Imran ! We tried our best to switch our fate , and we almost won but you know how well one perform , they cannot win if umpires are with opposite team.
Later when the results announced , PTI candidates scored almost 50-60 thousand in each constituency , now keeping in mind they MQM put 2/3[SUP]rd[/SUP] of PTI votes to trash , even if I keep lowest possible number , it was 1 lac 25 thousand vote for PTI in almost all constituencies of Karachi against 20-25 thousand of MQM.
But if I want to go with what turnout I saw on election day and people’s passion , it was like 1 lac 50 thousand+ votes for PTI in every area of Karachi.
PTI clearly WON in Karachi and MQM / Altaf Hussain knows this fact , this is the reason that Altaf hussain has been so mad on all his party , MQM is literally finished in Karachi , they are trying to resurrect their party by overhauling it but I’m sure its an irreversible process , if any point of time ECP manages to conduct free and fare elections in Karachi , it will be ONLY PTI all over the place. MQM is finished .
Conclusion:
But anyway , somewhat we karachiites were aware that MQM would do rigging and they will win ( just like what happened) but just to fulfil our promise with Imran Khan we came out and vote for him. We were more confident about Punjab but again it was a different type of rigging that took place in Punjab , that was surely well engineered by Najam Sethi with the help of International Powers like USA/UK/KSA.
We karachiites now envy people of KPK , I envy these taxi drivers of dubai , they could not reach their places but their prayers reached ALLAH s.w.t. , Congratulations to my dear Pashtoon and Hazara Brothers …. YOU ARE THE MOST EDUCATED people of pakistan , you are the most LUCKY people of Pakistan , I envy you but I pray for you and above all …. I THANK YOU KPK …for bringing PTI and Imran Khan in power .
For my other fellows of Punjab , Sindh , Karachi….. Let’s not be demoralized, Learn from life of our Prophet Muhammad s.a.w. and then Learn from Jinnah , Imran Khan … Never lose hope
Hum Karachiites ne Imran Khan ki baat per amal kia , uska kehna tha ke ,
“ me kisi aise shaks ko nahi janta jisne apni azaadi k liye khof se jang lari ho”
Mere Dosto! Tum sab ko janna chahye ,
“koi bhi bara kaam asan nahi hota , isi liye wo bara kaam hota he”
We have faith in Imran Khan….. Us ne hamey AIK QAUM bnaya he , usne pehli dafa hame sahi mano me sindhi , Punjabi , balochi pathan muhajir ke bjaye Pakistani kehalwana sikhaya he ….. Hum usko akela nahi chorenge …… Jab tak hamari saans he , jab tak uski sans he…. Hum uska sath denge………
Mubarak ho PTI ke Karkuno , Khush-qismat hotey hen wo log jo apne ehad ke aarif ko uski zindagi me hi pehchan lete hen , tum sab wo khush qismat log ho.
Yad rakho ! agar Imran ke sache karkun ho to ainda apni Shnakht “PAKISTANI” per fakhar kerna , apne kisi Punjabi/pathan/muhajir bhai ko necha na samjhna , HUM SAB AIK HEN….. HUM SAB PAKISTANI HEN……. HUM SAB IMRAN KHAN HEN……….
2013 Elections was WON by PTI
I’m sure PTI Won it
Because I Witnessed It
I’m sure PTI Won it
Because I Witnessed It
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