The government needs to explain its actions
One way of tackling any crisis is to take it head on and keep at it till it is resolved. The other, the more common one in this neck of the woods, is to respond like a proverbial ostrich: put your head in the sand, close your eyes and if asked pass the buck. What happened in the capital the other day when a man with two automatic guns and holding his own family hostage made quite such a ruckus on satellite, with the law enforcement agencies absolutely dumbfounded for a response. Even more disappointing was the reaction of the interior minister Ch Nisar Ali who instead of taking responsibility for the too apparent security lapses and the conduct of the police right under his nose, blamed it on Zamurd Khan, the PPP leader and an overnight hero for tackling the gunman, for not letting the police take control of the situation. That nearly after six hours of the unseemly circus!
That’s not all. The interior minister was conspicuously absent the next day from the parliamentary session where the opposition wanted to quite justifiably grill him. His playing truant has created more problems for him owing to his evasiveness. Reportedly, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is not happy with the whole episode and how it was handled and asked for a detailed report to be submitted to him. Agreed, a minister may be on leave, but he still has to respond to the calls of urgent nature or when there is an emergency, and holding the capital city hostage for nearly six hours surely qualifies as an emergency. Instead of letting others take the lead, including Zamurd Khan, it should have been the minister who should have been at the spot and issuing orders. With his presence there, Zamurd and Nabil Gabol, an MQM leader who also crossed the security cordon and talked to the gunman, would have not done anything like this. Ch Nisar’s anger at Zamurd’s actions is misplaced, for he only did what the security personnel should have done long ago. Why this drama was allowed to continue for this long is a question that needs to be answered. Why did the whole security machinery, that too in the capital of the country, fail to handle a lone armed man? The security personnel could have used rubber bullets, stun guns or any other non-lethal weapon to tame him.
One may also agree that the media devoted more time to the event than it should have but blaming it for creating hurdles in the operation that seemed to be nowhere there is unfortunate. What is needed is to improve the security system. Punishing a handful of cops would be mere eyewash.
