Saturday 20 / April / 2024
Given the soup in which the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) finds itself over a controversial attempt to privatise the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) — stalemated at the time of writing this — it would be hard to deny the government’s good fortune in finding a timely diversion from its interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan’s destructive blitz.
The party can thank the news cycle for it; sometimes the bad in this vicious cycle can do good for the powers-that-be. Wag the dog? You never know!
Since there will be time to ponder what led the PIA to a low flight how and why, there’s no denying the PML-N has a lot of soul-searching to do to set its house in order. And it’s the prime minister’s call to take.
Consider. After days of keeping mum as the opposition launched into the interior minister, accusing him of interfering in what the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)-led Sindh government cited as provincial issues — Nisar has openly thrown his lot behind the Rangers in a sweeping operation to rid the province of terror/crime nexus but which the Sindh government alleges is targeted against the PPP — he bristled in a presser like a man possessed.
It seemed Nisar had reached the end of his tether after days of enduring fire at the hands of the Sindh administration’s who’s who — and accentuated by verbal attacks from Opposition Leader Khurshid Shah.
To be fair to Nisar, he has probably become the fall guy in the whole drama given that the PPP is now shy of taking on the might of the military establishment, which is the parent body of the Rangers, and from whom it, in effect, derives its power. The party tried to legislate against its earlier mandated authority, but drew intense criticism from all quarters.
Following the Rangers’ arrest of his close aide Dr Asim Hussain on charges of terror-related funding and corruption last June, former president Asif Zardari, who is also the Co-Chairperson of the PPP, reacted sharply. But he provoked public ire with his warning that while khaki chiefs “can be around for only three years, the PPP would stay forever”.
“We will tear you brick by brick,” Zardari thundered, but by the time the ink had dried on his fulmination he had scurried out of the country — and has still not returned.
Left blue, the PPP has found a convenient scapegoat in Sharif’s interior minister not because he is apparently, the face of the Federation wanting to see the clean-up operation in Karachi reach its logical end, but moreso in an attempt to force Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to take sides on the matter.
Sharif, of course, is loath to the idea after the events of late 2014 when a protest movement led by that quintessential rabble rouser, Imran Khan — many pundits suggest, at the behest of the military, which wanted Sharif cut down to size for trying to wrest key foreign policy areas — nearly brought the house down in Islamabad.
Sharif gave ample proof he was pragmatic even before the ground began slipping that year when he prevented the interior minister from taking forceful action against frenzied protesters in the federal capital, but he most probably survived in office because a school massacre in Peshawar that stunned Pakistan and torpedoed all business, including any opposition to the government, helped bail him out.
However, where Sharif has failed is in keeping Nisar in check from running roughshod — over their own party’s fortunes. In fact, the inner circle suggests Sharif is at a loss to find the magic wand that can keep Nisar from scoring those own goals (in football parlance) — not because it happens in the heat of the moment, but that many swear, is deliberate!
Consider. As well as shooting missives back at Opposition Leader Khurshid Shah, Nisar went to the extent of confessing that Shah had benefited from the support that his party had extended to the ruling PML-N during the 2014 winter of dissent.
Amazingly, Nisar used the description “muk-mukka” (an “underhand deal” is the closest translation of the term in local parlance), and further rubbed salt into the wounds of his own party by saying Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (its sworn political enemy) was right all along in alleging so!
Nisar then rounded off the rejoinder by derisively saying the “privileges” Shah had (allegedly) drawn from the treasury was a separate story!
It drew a strong reaction from the PPP, but Shah decided to let discretion be the better part of valour, by retorting that he would respond to the charges before the PM in the parliament.
Before that could potentially happen, the PIA crisis arrived as a breather-in-disguise for the beleaguered Sharif, but with the Imran Khan-led opposition again smelling blood, another tactical retreat from the PML-N cannot be ruled out.
• The writer is a senior journalist based in Islamabad.
