Playing politics

Babar Awan’s habit of indulging in irrelevant arguments and politicising legal matters resulted in him getting snubbed by the court during suo motu proceedings into the Karachi violence which concluded on Wednesday with the bench reserving its judgement.

Mr Awan has a few peculiarities. One is, he has a penchant for representing the federation in every matter that comes up for hearing before the court; another is, he doesn’t know how to defend the government. Once he starts arguing the case you can’t stop him from referring to articles of the constitution one after the other having little relevance to the actual issue. At one point, Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry asked him to explain what he was trying to convey by saying: “Leaving the chartered spheres takes us to the minefields of doctrines”.

The former law minister has a problem that he keeps saying things which he can’t substantiate. There’s no disputing his observation that the Sindh government’s executive authority covered 23 districts but this doesn’t mean that its inability to control the incidents of kidnapping and killing in the provincial capital should not be called a failure on its part. Can he justify the attempts being made by the PPP leadership to patch up with the MQM by insisting that holding negotiation with political stakeholders forms the basis of democracy?

Mr Awan was rendered speechless by Justice Sarmad Jalal Osmany who very rightly pointed out that there shouldn’t be any dialogue with criminals. The PPP leadership might be desperate to bring the MQM back into the coalition but while trying to pursue its policy of political reconciliation it should not ignore the fact that making this ethnic group stop extending patronage to extortionists, land-grabbers and killers won’t be an easy task.

If the federation’s counsel was trying to convince their lordships that the elected political leadership understood its responsibility of defending the country internally and inclusive efforts were being made to maintain peace and harmony in Karachi, Interior Minister Rehman Malik was seen shuttling between Karachi and Islamabad explaining to the media that the outlaws arrested during the ongoing operation belonged to all political parties.

Mr Malik refrained from pointing a finger of accusation at any particular party. No doubt, he is boiling inside with indignation after being the subject of an offensive diatribe by Dr Zulfiqar Mirza but still he doesn’t want to get into any controversy by naming the politicians patronising criminals. That the operation was launched from Lyari is self-explanatory. Somehow, it was a conscious effort to absolve the MQM from the blame of disrupting peace in the country’s commercial hub. Meanwhile, Altaf bhai, who virtually held the nation hostage to his harangue last week, made it clear that the party workers found involved in criminal activities had already been expelled.

The interior minister would however find few takers for his flawed assessment that other political stakeholders in Sindh are equally responsible for creating unrest in Karachi. There would be few who disagree that during the Musharraf era when the MQM had been given a free rein, the PPP and the ANP could barely maintain their existence. It was only after the revival of democracy in 2008 that both the parties, taking a cue from the MQM model, reorganised their cadres and stepped up efforts to wrest their share of power in Karachi.

There is one thing which hurts the MQM the most. Its leaders do not tire of alleging that they are constantly being subjected to media trial but they can’t substantiate what they say. If they think that the media exceeds its limits by raising questions about the May 12 carnage, they are wrong. They even need to do a lot of explaining about the unlawful activities carried out in the city over the past one decade when the country was under the most repressive military rule. They are aware of the identity of the criminals who were running torture cells or killing political opponents on their watch. They cannot blame the media for discriminating against their party when they are given more time to express their views on TV talk shows and at other forums compared to all other political parties put together.

Now that the PPP controls the government, it cannot be accused of driving other parties against the wall. Rather, it is still making effort to bring the MQM back into the coalition just because it considers it a political reality and a genuine stakeholder. But what it cannot afford to ignore is that the so-called process of political engagement cannot be carried on indefinitely at the expense of the lives of innocent people. Peace will remain elusive in the restive megapolis as long as the PPP leadership shies away from taking tough decisions. In order to make the law enforcement apparatus more effective, there is need for a massive cleansing of the Karachi police which is crowded with political appointees.

The writer is Executive Editor, Pakistan Today