Muttahida Qaumi Movement Pakistan (MQM-P) leader Farooq Sattar on Friday held a joint press conference in Islamabad alongside the leader of his party’s estranged camp, Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui.
Dr Sattar said that despite his differences with the Bahadurabad group of MQM-P, both sides remained engaged in negotiations with each other through mediators and direct contact and reached an agreement about the Senate elections to be held tomorrow.
Sattar said he is “certain” that the two camps will reach an agreement about the status of the two coordination committees soon as well in an effort to prevent the party’s vote bank from being divided.
The MQM-P leader announced that the two groups have agreed on five names to be nominated for tomorrow’s Senate elections.
The nominees finalised are Barrister Farogh Naseem and Kamran Khan Tessori for the general seats, Abdul Qadir Khanzada for the technocrat seat, Dr Nighat Shakeel for the women’s seat and Sanjay Perwani for the minorities seat.
Sattar expressed the hope that MQM-P will win all five seats.
He said the party’s leaders are “embarrassed” and apologise to their voters and workers who have been “mentally stressed” by the conflict between the PIB and Bahadurabad groups.
“It was not a happy occasion for us either that a strain remained between us [the two groups] for so many days,” Sattar said.
Recalling that “All is well that ends well,” Sattar said the agreement reached for the Senate elections was the first step of reconciliation between the PIB and Bahadurabad groups and the next step would be ending the differences over Rabita Committee.
Addressing the press conference, Siddiqui clarified that the Bahadurabad group’s nominee for the general seats was Barrister Farogh Naseem while the Sattar-led camp’s nominee was Kamran Tessori, who has been at the centre of the original conflict between the two groups.
Siddiqui said despite the differences in their positions, the public could not see any “heat” rising between the two camps, adding that this was because “We are one family and will proceed ahead like a family” — to which Sattar responded with an Inshallah (God willing).
