Dear Karachiites, it is obvious that the status quo cannot continue. Unfortunately, you're not going to like the solution. It involves kissing the ring and vote for @AAliZardari and the PPP with the kind of blind loyalty that the city voted for Altaf Hussain and the MQM.

We can protest and complain and call them names, but here is what we know: 88% of the land area of the city is either directly controlled by the provincial government, or indirectly in the form of the effective control it exerts over the city government.

What that means is that the path to salvation runs through the Sindh Assembly. And given the state of Sindh politics, we need to have influence within the majority party within the Sindh Assembly. And the only way to have that is to have them rely on your votes.

The PPP does not care about additional seats in the Sindh Assembly itself. They have a solid enough majority to not need nor care about more seats. They do, however, care about the National Assembly. And that is something that the people of Karachi can offer.

Karachi and Hyderabad have 24 seats in the National Assembly, but the PPP only has 4 of those seats. If they can start counting on those 20 additional seats in the NA, the PPP would go from 43 to 63 directly elected seats, half of what they need for a parliamentary majority.

And no, it cannot be PPP in alliance with the MQM, etc. We've tried that already and it achieves absolutely nothing. It has to be Karachiites and Hyderabadis voting for actual PPP politicians, people who have been in the party for decades. And it has to be voting for PPP with the

same blind loyalty that the MQM commanded: the PPP has to be able to count on these votes in their sleep. No need for them to stress about it. Once they feel secure about having these votes, then the conversation about solving Karachi's problems can begin.

As of right now, what does Karachi have that it can give the PPP in exchange for more local control? What has Karachi given the PPP that it can take away in order to punish them for bad management of the city? Absolutely nothing on both those counts.

Karachi's middle class, many of whom are Sindhi but the majority are not, need to stop thinking of ethnic Sindhis as 'those other people from the villages'. We all come from different ethnic groups, and by the way, the PPP leadership, may be majority-Sindhi in terms of ethnicity,

but are at this point near-100% Karachiites.

There is no 'them' or 'us'. We all live in this city. Maybe if we started acting like this is a city where EVERYONE belongs, we'll actually achieve some political results.