Shah replaces Shah

I enjoyed Morial Shah’s article published in the issue of The Express Tribune on July 27. It was written with compassion and affection and a certain touch of sadness. Qaim’s sense of loyalty both to the founder of the PPP, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, his daughter and her husband, is quite fetching. In his farewell Qaim said, “I bow to the wishes of the Party.”

In his adieu he demonstrated a high sense of discipline and duty. Frankly, I think he had had enough and welcomed a rest. I hadn’t met him very often, but whenever I did, he was extremely polite and courteous. Of the two top VIPs in the province (every MPA and his uncle is a VIP in Sindh), Qaim was the only one who spoke at both public and diplomatic functions, and invariably without notes. The governor sat tight-lipped, and reserved his energy for cutting the ceremonial cake.

Right. However, that’s not how many people see the outgoing chief minister. While they acknowledge his old-fashioned graciousness, they see him as somebody who is always caught in a train wreck. Somebody who is as active as a tin of tuna, somebody who trots around with ungainly haste after a tragedy has taken place, somebody who is at a loss on how to proceed, where every gross misdemeanour has found him in a furrowed agony of indecision. Some of these criticisms are a little harsh and unkind. The fact is, the public had stopped taking notice of him. Orders that he had passed, such as the removal of all billboards, were received with half-hearted enthusiasm. Malir acted as if it was governed from Malta. Qaim had his regular cabinet meetings, minutes were taken, personnel were shuffled around and after the usual cliches and platitudes, 24 official cars purchased with taxpayers’ money held up the traffic for at least an hour.



We have a new chief minister now and we will have to see what he can do. He has wasted no time in having his first meeting. The resident cynic believes that unless he behaves like the Nawab of Kalabagh or General Azam, he will not be able to stamp out street crime. What is needed is a touch of ruthlessness and gloves-off assault against the armed robbers who terrorise peaceful citizens.

Around a week ago, my younger son had withdrawn some dollars from a bank in Khadda Market when he was intercepted by three heavily armed masked men at a traffic intersection. One struck an attitude in front of his vehicle brandishing an AK-47 assault rifle, while the other two took command of the two front windows. One barked in the tart tones of rage, “Hand over the foreign currency you just withdrew from…” and he mentioned the name of the bank… “or we will blow your head off.” A little research showed that there had been five other cases of people who had withdrawn foreign exchange from the same bank who were held up in similar fashion.

Will the new chief minister act like a lightning rod of a tough new administration that makes the curbing of street crime a top priority? And if the armed masked bandits happen to be off duty policemen, will he give them the third degree? Or will he let the bureaucracy use him as a maypole and manipulate him as they did his predecessor and divert him from what he should be doing — providing clean drinking water to people in the interior of Sindh, dismiss and punish heads of police stations who refuse to register FIRs of poor defenceless urban and rural folk. And ensure that they recover kidnapped young girls, women and boys — as if they were their own.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 31^st, 2016.

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