Situationer: After Pyrrhic victory, MQM sees salvation in unity or 'messiah's return'.

THE result of Thursday's nail-biting by-election on a Karachi National Assembly seat, NA-240, has once again exposed the fissures within Mohajir vote bank as well as Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan's organisational weaknesses, giving rise to fears within its ranks that the party may not be able to maintain its electoral grip on the city's local government organisations in the July 24 elections either without the blessings of Altaf Hussain or in the presence of multiple factions.

The MQM-P just managed to retain the seat by winning the by-poll with a thin margin of only 65 votes. This poor performance in the constituency that has more than half a million votes also results in calls of unity among different factions of the once unified MQM even from those who did not take part in the electoral process.

The MQM-P candidate, Abu Bakar, won the election by securing 10,683 votes against the runner-up candidate of Tehreek Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), who bagged 10,618 votes. The candidates of Afaq Ahmed-led Mohajir Qaumi Movement-Haqiqi and Mustafa Kamal-led Pak Sarzameen Party got 8,383 and 4,797 votes, respectively. The turnout was mere 8.3 per cent.

While the credit (or discredit) of the low turnout in the by-election goes to the boycott call given Altaf Hussain-led MQM-London and absence of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf and Jamaat-i-Islami from electoral arena, election authorities could not be absolved from the blame as they fixed a weekday for polling instead of holding this vital exercise on the weekend.

'Lack of confidence'

Background conversations with several current and former leaders and senior activists of the once unified MQM reveal that almost all of them believe that the voters in the traditional Mohajir constituency clearly expressed no confidence in all the groups because of their divisions and ugly infighting as around 92pc of the constituents did not take any interest in exercising their right of franchise and preferred to stay indoors.

'This is not only because of Altaf Hussain's boycott call...the low turnout was also because of us...[MQM] Pakistan, PSP and Haqiqi. People rejected the division between us...it's us who should be blamed, not London,' says a senior MQM-P activist.

'In the last six years [after the establishment-imposed a ban on Mr Hussain following his Aug 22, 2016 controversial speech], we [MQM-P, PSP and MQM-H] have given nothing to our voters except disappointment. And yesterday all of us have failed to convince...