Sindh Home Minister Zulfiqar Ali Mirza has gone abroad on ‘sick leave,’ said Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah who also announced that he will be taking charge of the provincial home ministry until further notice.
“I cannot tell you when he will return back, but he has got on leave, indefinitely,” said the chief minister at the Governor’s House in Karachi after the swearing-in ceremony of the new provincial information minister, Sharjeel Inam Memon.
Sources say that Mirza is likely to be assigned a key ministry in the federal cabinet after being elected as a member of the Senate. The Sindh chief minister, however, denied these rumours.
He claimed that the government would begin to crack down on extortion rackets in the provincial capital of Karachi and was in the process of devising a plan to do so.
Zulfiqar Mirza is a highly controversial figure in Sindh politics. His statements have frequently been the cause of friction between Sindh’s ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and their coalition allies, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM).
Mirza’s theatrics frequently led to the MQM threatening to leave the coalition unless he was ousted from the powerful Sindh home ministry. They were always brought back by the PPP leadership with assurances that Mirza would eventually be dealt with.
Mirza once referred to the MQM as a party that supported “target killers” and “criminals” in Karachi. He also referred to the People’s Aman Committee (PAC) as a sister organisation of the PPP. The MQM views the PAC as one of the principal culprits behind the extortion rackets that plague the provincial capital.
The support for the PAC, which Mirza referred to as a ‘welfare organisation’, appeared to be the last straw for the MQM. When Karachi’s trade organisations announced a strike in protest against extortion, the MQM joined in, giving the PPP a 48-hour deadline to get rid of Mirza.
Sources say that the rally against extortion is a ruse being employed by the MQM to disguise their opposition to Mirza. The Sindh government, on the directives of President Zardari, had earlier formed a committee to tackle the extortion problem.
With Mirza’s departure, sources say the chances of a reshuffle in the Sindh cabinet have increased manifold, but there are no confirmed reports of any changes immediately on the cards.
Musical chairs at the centre
Meanwhile, sources in Islamabad say that Mirza may be elected to a Senate seat vacated by Senator Khutumal Jewan, who will then become a member of the National Assembly on a reserved seat for minorities that fell vacant after the assassination of Minorities Affairs Minister Shahbaz Bhatti last month.
Upon election to the Senate, Mirza would become eligible to be given the federal interior ministry, which sources say is likely to happen. The incumbent federal interior minister, Rehman Malik, may be given the job of foreign minister, currently vacant after Shah Mehmood Qureshi resigned in protest over the Raymond Davis affair.
Under election laws, if a reserved minority seat falls vacant in the National Assembly, the next person on the party’s list submitted to the Election Commission before the general elections becomes the new member. Jewan was next on the list of PPP for National Assembly minority seats. Sources say Jewan is likely to take oath as MNA in the next National Assembly session starting on April 11.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 7th, 2011.
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