Call it the necessity of wading through the contours of the realpolitik or call it simple capitulation, the ruling PPP has not reacted to the recent murder of Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer the way the liberal component of the civil society would have liked it to. There is, of course, no need for the PPP to satisfy them. It is a real political party that need not bother with armchair activists who wont vote and think that the expression of righteous indignation amongst affluent liberal cliques is the extent of activism. On the other hand, it is the salt of the earth, feet-on-the-ground activists and voters that the PPP does need to worry about. And many of those have begun to wonder whether too much ground has been ceded to the extremists in public discourse. They havent seen much light recently. The PPP leadership, though they couldnt well have kept quiet about the murder itself, have rolled back on almost all of the stances that the slain Governor stood for, specially in the face of the massive rallies taken out to protest any possible changes in the blasphemy law. The leadership seems to be falling over in frantic attempts to reiterate their stance of not, under any circumstances, changing the blasphemy laws.
In the light of this, PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardaris statements at a London memorial of the slain Governor are bound to be welcomed not only by the aforementioned PPP activists but also the nations beleaguered minorities. Calling those who celebrated Mr Taseers death the real blasphemers, he went on to say that he would not be silenced. Mr Bhutto, who more than outranks the prime minister in the partys structure, could lend some hope in this bleak public discourse.
More power also to the Punjab Assembly, which recently passed a unanimous resolution against the murder. Granted, none of the members would dare have another look at the blasphemy law itself (theirs to debate, if not legislate) but a condemnation of murder, would, at any rate, mean taking head on constituents who would have participated in rallies praising the murderer Mumtaz Qadri.
A dreadfully slow slog out of the rut we are in. But a fight that needs to be fought.
