Tantrums of my favourite Maulana

Fazlur Rehman's move to quit the coalition is hilarious - the PPP should not offer him anything for his return.

Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman is a funny guy. Just recently, he took a moral stand (his own words) a week ago to quit the government because the PM fired his minister. At that point in time, he was praised by many within his party and even nationally for finally showing some spine and taking action. But now that the adrenaline rush is over, Maulana sahab fears that he might have gone a bit too far and that there may not be a way back.

His most recent comments highlight this anxiety. He stood outside the National Assembly and said that the president was doing all he could to reconcile with his party while it was the PM who was a major hurdle in the discussions.

In fact, Maulana sahab has a problem with the PM because the JUI-F chief angrily stormed out of the room and now that he wants to come back inside, the PM has locked it and won’t let him in. The questions that arise are:

• If you were eventually going to stay with the government, why did you ever leave it?


• Does Maulana sahab think politics is a joke and that he can go around throwing tantrums because he did not get his way?

Fact: the ministries his party holds are the same ministries that are being handed down to the provinces in a couple of months due to the 18^th Amendment. So basically he was going to have to leave those ministries anyway, but now that he made his ministers resign, he can bargain for permanent federal ministries. Does he seriously think that the people of Pakistan can’t see this?

I hate many things, but what I hate the most is being taken for a ride by a bunch of guys who act pious, yet all they do is obsess about how they can increase their share of the pie.

For once the PPP has done something decent; they even convinced the MQM into sticking with the coalition and not resorting to point scoring. All they have to do now is stick to their line and not offer JUI-F anything, perhaps even make them sit in the opposition.

How can we leave our lovely Pakistani media out of this? When is the media going to actually figure out how to make sense of things instead of fuelling public frenzy about everything? Instead of discussing important issues, in the last 10 days, the media has been trying to convince people that the government is about to fall.

Just because news agencies have fancy graphics and giant video walls with numbers written on them, does not mean they are political analysts or pundits. Just because you have a "Dr" before your name doesn’t mean you have a PhD in political science.

To conclude, Maulana sahab made a rash decision and now has to live with it.