PPP fails to recreate the Bhutto miracle

ISLAMABAD:

Half hour past noon, I was about to lose my mind while sitting in the press gallery. Our National Assembly had been meeting for more than 90 minutes and there was hardly any mention of the brutal murder of an unarmed youth by Rangers in Karachi. All TV networks had been airing the footage of the killing non-stop since late Wednesday night. Two lawmakers did refer to it, but only through half-heartedly submitted ‘points of order’. The PML-N staged a walkout to express ire over the alleged prevention of their leader’s visit to Quetta. ‘Our representatives’ started looking callous and indifferent to me.

But then one of PML-N’s hawks, Khawaja Saad Rafique, walked in and anxiously tried to seek the chair’s attention. Nadim Chan was forced to give him the mike.

Recounting the Karachi killing, the street hardened Saad contended that Pakistan was a country whose citizens were being repressed and brutalised by ‘men in uniforms’.

Cutting across the political divide, majority of the legislators endorsed his demand for an immediate sacking of the DG Rangers, Sindh, with spirited desk thumping.

The prime minister walked into the House, when Saad was scatter-shooting at institutions, “presumed to have been established for protecting the people and defending this country.” Although Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani had no words to justify the killing, he regretted that it had occurred and tried to placate the PML-N leader by telling him that he had ordered a probe into the matter.

Having said this, he reminded PML-N leader that being a former speaker of the National Assembly he was conversant with rules that “prohibit (anyone) ridiculing the judiciary and armed forces…in parliament”.

The prime minister claimed Saad had used expressions which “were impolite”.

Parliamentarians, he admonished, should not be using such expressions against key national institutions.

Chan expunged the remarks which had upset Gilani.

This annoyed Javed Hashmi, a firebrand of yesteryear.

Most in the press gallery were overwhelmed when the paralysis-struck Hashmi folded his hands. In a choked voice and with broken sentences, he begged the “men in uniform to check your trigger-happy instincts. If things will go on like this, there is bound to come a day when no citizen would like to come to your rescue, just as it happened in the streets of Dhaka in 1971”.

Delivering the passionate speech, Hashmi had no idea what had happened during the troika meeting the other day.

The press release from the Aiwan-i-Sadr reported the meeting discussed the usual stuff – reviewed “national security affairs”. Yet most television anchorpersons and TV talk-show hosts tried to make their viewers believe as if the said meeting was to deliberate over a statement made by the Iranian president. In the said statement the maverick Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed to have gotten hold of foul-free information, suggesting that the “Great Satan” was scheming to steal Pakistan’s nuclear assets.

A trustworthy fly on the wall, where the troika had met on Wednesday, revealed to me, however, that most of the time during this meeting, the non-civilian side had expressed jitters.

The national security outfits of Pakistan, he strongly believed, were being “maligned” by domestic and foreign media and the “elected government” had not yet been able to mount an “effective countermeasure”.

Another reliable source almost said ‘yes’ but stunned me by claiming that Babar Awan had been telling some of his very close friends that “they” had requested the president to “launch” him for defending national security institutions.

Let me finish this piece by adding that after the troika meeting, the prime minister felt doubly agitated when told about the Karachi incident late in the night. He and some of his trusted officials did not sleep until 4 am of Thursday morning. “Perception management” remained the key issue of their brainstorming. No wonder, Gilani was found lecturing on how to speak in the assembly, when it comes to discuss the national security affairs and some embarrassing issues involving the ‘men in uniform.’





Published in The Express Tribune, June 10th, 2011.