Puppet on a feeble string

Qadri does not appear to be in any position to profit from the sit-in in Islamabad. But MQM stands to gain a lot.

I am as much repelled by dynastic/personality cult politics as my friends in the Minhajul Quran and the MQM perhaps are. But I have never heard of elections within Minhaj (a corporate entity in reality) or in the MQM. The two are based on personality cults. Without Qadri, I don’t see Minhaj surviving for a single day. My friends in the MQM would vehemently disagree if I said the same about their group. But I cannot imagine the Rabita Committee without Altaf Bhai heading it. The PML-N, the PPP, the ANP, the JUI-F, the PML-Q, the PML-F, the PTI and the like, except the Jamaat-e-Islami (that is why, perhaps, it has never won enough seats in parliament), are all dynastic/ personality cult parties. But abandoning the democratic process for any reason, least of all because Qadri, Altaf and I do not like dynastic politics, is like cutting the nose to spite the face.

Let us see what is happening on this score in other civilised and not-so-civilised countries across the globe. What about the world’s largest democracy — India? Bangladesh? Sri Lanka? In the Philippines, it is the fourth generation of Aquinos which is ruling today. I am sure we all know who Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia is. In Malaysia, Mahathir Mohammad, the former prime minister, had assumed a cult figure and ruled as a dictator. In Thailand, Yingluck Shinwatra, sister of Thaksin Shinwatra, the ousted and exiled former prime minister is now riding the popularity crust. The less said the better about Taiwan. In South Korea, it has been a tale of one martial law after the other for almost 45 years. In Iran, it is the Ayatollahs who ‘guide’ and ‘lead’ an elected parliament. Saudi Arabia? Don’t make me laugh. The jury is still out on the Arab Spring. Turkey, which has recently come out of the iron grip of its military, appears to be still struggling to keep the dreaded institution at bay. And what about the Kennedy clan in the US? They did try, didn’t they? Clinton followed Clinton, almost? And the Bush clan? After W and WH, Jeb is now getting primed for the White House.

We have tried the Monti option every time we suffered from extended military rule but still failed to remove the fundamental distortions from our economy. Considering their respective political support, I have no doubt about how Mr Qadri and Altaf Bhai would react if a caretaker government of their own choice were to strictly enforce the country’s tax laws across the board? How can you run a country if people earning taxable income refuse to pay their national dues and donors refuse to continue the dole unless the recipient collected taxes from its own people.

There appears to be an unofficial consensus among media pundits and political parties that Qadri is not his own man. But on the crucial question of who is pulling his strings there have been all kinds of speculations. The PPP, the army, and the US were the main suspects. But one by one most have since disappeared from the list. Qadri himself does not appear to be in any position, political or otherwise, to profit from the ensuing chaos following a successful sit-in in the capital on the due date. But the MQM stands to gain a lot. For starters, it can bargain for a decisive say in the formation of the Sindh interim government which, at the moment, it perhaps believes it is not in a position to influence as the provincial opposition has been won over by the PPP by sending its man to the Punjab Governor’s House. Altaf Bhai has already tendered an unconditional apology to the Supreme Court in the contempt case and postponed the threatened political drone attack by a couple of days. But the Supreme Court order for re-verification of voters’ list in Karachi and pressure for re-delimitation of constituencies in Karachi and Hyderabad seems to have pushed the MQM back to the wall. An expert political poker player, Altaf Bhai perhaps hopes to bluff his way out of the jam in the dust kicked up by the confusion following the MQM sponsored sit-in. Already there are reports that the MQM has taken over the Minhajul Quran’s media management and the way the huge public meeting of December 23, 2012 was arranged and organised, it is difficult not to suspect that the MQM’s presence on that day in Lahore was not limited only to the presence of its 50 workers.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 9^th, 2013.