KARACHI, Feb 10 (TNS): Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan’s (MQM-P) convener Dr. Farooq Sattar on Saturday offered his party’s coordination committee to draft a new mutually agreed upon list of four candidates for the upcoming Senate elections, vowing to visit the Bahadurabad stronghold of his intra-party rivals if his offer is accepted.
Speaking to newsmen outside his residence in PIB Colony, Sattar backed down from his earlier demand of securing a Senate election ticket for his jeweller-turned-politician ally Kamran Tessori, saying: “This problem was never about Kamran Tessori, it was something else.
“The committee had objected to Tessori’s candidacy on February 7 and I had agreed to it right there and then but then I couldn’t go to see them and problems escalated. Now I offer to the coordination committee that let’s draft a new list of four mutually agreed upon candidates from the total of 15 candidates. We will drop the names of whoever is controversial.”The development has emerged after the meeting between Farooq Sattar and Rabita Committee members that was lasted more than one and half hour.
Farooq Sattar has also called General workers meeting tomorrow, Sunday, and vowed all members of Rabita Committee will present in the meeting.
Hours earlier, the coordination committee had announced that it was retracting the letter it had written to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) in connection with nominations for the upcoming Senate elections.The coordination committee on Friday had asked the ECP to not entertain the nominations submitted by the party’s estranged leader, Sattar, claiming that it’s the committee’s privilege to do so.
The committee had also announced that it was delegating the right to choose party’s elections candidates to deputy-convener Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui — a move which failed when the ECP ruled in Sattar’s favour, saying that nominating candidates for Senate elections is the sole right of a party’s leader, and since the MQM-P is registered in Sattar’s name, handing out party tickets will be his call.
