At one level this is to be applauded. The Model Town incident was appalling, heads should have rolled in the political and police ranks and the report exposes in stark detail the guilty men, and names them. Why not form an alliance to bring justice to the families of the dead and injured? Turn the card over and there is the 2018 general election. This grand alliance although notionally spurred by a textbook example of political incompetence and police overreach and brutality, is more about eroding the vote bank of the PML-N in Punjab than it is about righting a dreadful wrong. A display of unity around an issue of core importance to the national moral fabric is a polished optic, a vehicle from which an assault may be mounted on the PML-N primacy in Punjab.
Cynical as this may be the reality is that no matter what the coming together may represent, it is a unity built on sand and will disintegrate as the election draws nigh, just as all the other ‘alliances’ have over the months and years. Justice for Model Town victims? Dream on.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 9th, 2017.
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