Picture this: a city of 30 million souls, Pakistan’s economic heartbeat, where the mayor—Karachi’s so-called “hot seat”—is a household name, unlike the mayors of Lahore, Islamabad, Peshawar, or Quetta, whose names most people don’t even recall. Everyone looks to Karachi’s mayor to fix broken streets, clogged drains, and crumbling infrastructure. Although Arif Hasan’s book The Land Issue claims the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) controls 30.9 percent of the city, Mayor Murtaza Wahab himself stated in 2023 that he controls just 27.4 percent—highlighting the “hot seat’s” limited reach. A mayor for barely a quarter of the city? It feels like a cruel joke for Karachi’s people—and for Pakistan. This broken system, with no city-wide master plan and no constitutional protection for local government, leaves residents lost in a maze of blame. Can Karachi’s mayor ever rise above being a scapegoat? Only if we give them real power.

Karachi is different. In Punjab, the PML-N mostly gets the mandate; in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, PTI dominates. So even without active local government setups, these parties invest in their cities. In Sindh, the PPP relies on rural votes. Karachi rarely gives them a clear mandate, with support split between the PPP, MQM, PTI, and JI. After 17 years of PPP rule in the province, Karachi is now the fourth least liveable city in the world, so public distrust is understandable. In the 2023 Local Government Elections (LG), MQM’s non-participation and fervent hope that a PPP mayor—backed by the PPP’s provincial government—would secure funds and spark development, led to Murtaza Wahab’s win. This refocused attention on LG, with KMC, 25 Town Municipal Corporations (TMCs), and 246 Union Councils (UCs), yet residents’ hopes for progress remain unfulfilled.

Rewind to the City District Government Karachi (CDGK) era under Pervez Musharraf, when mayors like Naimatullah Khan (JI, 2001–2005) and Mustafa Kamal (MQM, 2005–2010) wielded direct federal funds to transform the city. In the 1990s,........

© The Friday Times