Straight-talk
What Sin Has Sindh Committed?
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada
May 28 marked the 15 th anniversary of Nawaz Sharif’s most notable achievement of his last term as Prime Minister of Pakistan. It was on this day that Pakistan, on his watch, decided to go nuclear in the face of blatant—and doubtlessly crude—arm-twisting of his from the world’s mightiest military power.
Nawaz’ heroic cost him dearly. The powers-that-be, enraged by his bravado and defiance pressed into service their moles in high places in Pakistan including, of course, its armed forces. The ace up their sleeve was a Pakistani Bonaparte, by the name of General Pervez Musharraf, eager to do their bidding and find a short-cut to power.
What raised the hackles of Pakistan’s and Nawaz’ adversaries even more was his diplomatic savvy which soon brought arch-rival India’s PM, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, riding into Lahore on board a bus. The two hopeless-enemies—now nuclear—were expected by Cassandras and Jeremiahs to be at each other’s throats. But there they were, infused by their new ‘balance-of-terror’ striking a new path of peace.
It was then that General Musharraf struck to pull the rug under Nawaz’ feet—and his peace process with India—by embarking on his ill-fated Kargil adventure that was bound to backfire on him and Pakistan. However, he used that as an alibi to topple Nawaz and ease himself into the saddle as Pakistan’s ‘savior-in-shinning-armor.’
That savior is, today, languishing in his plush incarceration on the outskirts of Islamabad, while the man he thought he’d banished from Pakistan for good is getting ready to slide back into the saddle for an unprecedented third term in office as PM.
That the clock has come back full circle was amply on display this week when Vajpayee’s successor, PM Manmohan Singh, dispatched his special emissary, M.S. Lamba, to Lahore to greet Nawaz on behalf of his master and reciprocate Nawaz’ determination to pick up the thread of relations between two historical neighbours at precisely the point where Musharraf’s perfidy had stopped the train in its tracks.
There’s nary a doubt that the fickle finger of fate is writing a new script for Nawaz, as well as for Pakistan.
That Nawaz is what the man on the streets of Pakistan would hail as Moqadar-ka-Sikandar or the ‘man with Midas’ touch’ is beyond contention, or contest, in the wake of Nawaz’ spectacular victory at the polls of last May 11.
Pakistanis are not known as a very charitable or condescending people, when it comes to fallen heroes. Politicians are especially susceptible to be dumped on to the dust-bin of history in Pakistan once they may have fallen from grace.
In this realm the psyche of the Pakistani people looks like a blend of both feudal and democratic traits—otherwise an oxymoron in its chemistry. They have the typical feudal instinct to be swayed by extreme swings of the mood: they’d place a hero on the pinnacle and worship him—or her—to the extent where the hero would be immune to any weakness of character, or personality flaws. But a villain would be banished to the dungeons of perversity, where he or she should forget about any rehabilitation in popular esteem.
However, Nawaz seems to be an exception to the rule. If not the people of Pakistan then, certainly, the people of Punjab—the heart of the Federation of Pakistan and its most populous province—have closed the book, in these just-concluded elections, on Nawaz’ failures of the past. They have given him a mandate to lead them, and the rest of Pakistan.
Let all friends and well-wishers of Pakistan hope that this ‘heavy mandate’ of the people wouldn’t go to Nawaz’ head and propel him into a trajectory of power totally oriented in favour of amassing more and more power for personal glory. That course could be fraught with dangers aplenty.
Pakistan’s tragedy-prone history is replete with heroes-with-heavy-mandate falling by the wayside, or devoured by trap doors that aggrandizement of absolute power had lost sight of. Nawaz, in his second-term was an unwitting victim of the then ‘heavy-mandate’ that his cronies and court-jesters were prone to repeating, ad nauseam, to justify their corrupt practices.
The people of Punjab have cast their vote in favour of experience over experiment. Nawaz stands for experience, while Imran presented himself as an exponent of experimentation with something that hadn’t been tried or tested.
So the people of Punjab, still wedded to feudal influences, played it safe. They opted for the old maxim: a bird in hand is better than two in the bush. But they would expect, like the rest of the country that Team Nawaz would perform. And perform they must, unless they too have a death wish, like the PPP-minions of Zardari who have driven Zulfi Bhutto’s once-glorious PPP into the pits in Punjab.
What an ignominy this election has brought to PPP, shrinking it into a rural-Sindh party in thrall to the band of robber-barons presided over by Ali Baba Zardari. Zulfi Bhutto and his illustrious daughter must be turning into their graves. What a mischief Zardari has done to them and their legacy.
One wonders what sorcery has afflicted the people of Sindh that they have, clearly, lost their sense of judgement.
Compare Sindh’s lacklustre performance at the polls with the amazing capability of the people of Khyber-Pakhtoon khwa (KP).
The people of KP have uprooted their traditional guardians of political power—the Pakhtoonwali-flag waving ANP—because of their dismal track record in power, and decided to opt for Imran Khan’s novice party because it holds the promise of a better tomorrow for them.
Sindh, lamentably, seems to suffer from amnesia in returning to power the thieving bunch of PPP-MQM despite their ignominious performance of the past five years in power.
What has this deadly-duo of PPP and MQM done for them—the people of Sindh-- in past five years, one might ask the gambols in both rural and urban parts of Sindh, except that they filled their already-bulging coffers to the brim at the expense of the people’s bread.
And lo and behold, the sick man of Sindh—the befuddled, clueless and doddering Qaim Ali Shah—has once again been anointed by his master, Zardari, to remount the saddle of Sindh’s Chief Minister. Could there be a more cruel joke with the people of Sindh than that?
Qaim Ali Shah was an epitome, a personification, of a feckless politician who couldn’t even tell his right hand from his left. Himself corrupt to his bone-marrow he allowed a free hand to Zardari’s foster-brother, Owais Muzaffar, a.k.a. Tappi to run Sindh, and particularly Karachi, as his personal fief. One can rest assured that the same sick and bizarre regime of wanton loot and corruption is all set to return to its favourite game with vengeance.
The future of Pakistan’s largest city looks even bleaker, for its denizens in their revolting slumber have once again decided to bake their ‘fortune-cookie’ in the oven of MQM.
Or is it that the mafia has, as usual, stolen the vote of the people of Karachi—its Mohajir segment, in particular—with its well-honed gangster tactics?
The victory of PTI candidate, Dr Alvi, in the only constituency of Karachi where MQM was thwarted from its highway-robbery, is a categorical statement that, given a fair chance and the freedom to vote without intimidation of hooligans and murderers, the people of Karachi, too—at least a large body of them---would vote for change as NA-250 has.
So, while the rest of Pakistan is in for an exciting period under Nawaz, in his third term, the hapless people of Sindh are condemned to wallow in misery. It’s more of the same on the cards for them. Are they victims of circumstances or a people suffering from mental fatigue with no clue in sight to get out of their circle of calamity? Only time will tell how the cookie crumbles in Karachi and the rest of Sindh. - K_K_ghori@yahoo.com
(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)
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