Who will bell the cat?

ISLAMABAD:

News hounds found it difficult to stay put in the press gallery when the National Assembly was busy in the first reading of budgetary proposals at a leisurely pace punctuated with dreary speeches.

Forced to look for interesting happenings elsewhere, one ended up in a lobby, where Shah Mehmood Qureshi (SMQ) was present with two PPP legislators and a senior journalist. He sounded vehement while denying that he had conveyed the distinct impression of switching over to Tehrik-e-Insaf on a Javed Chaudhry talk show he shared with Imran Khan on Express News the other night.

“We were simply not ruling out the possibility of forming an alliance,” he kept repeating. That compelled the cynic in me to seriously wonder in what capacity he was anticipating such a development: as a PPP leader or..? Shah Sahib evaded a clear answer with a polite smile but did not forget to add proudly that various political parties have been approaching him since the day he refused the Zardari-Gilani government offer to join the cabinet as minister for water and power. “Sunni Tehrik was the most enthusiastic,” he revealed.

Federal minister Babar Ghauri of MQM joined the group at this point and gleefully added that Qureshi was given a warm welcome at the MQM headquarters as well during a visit to Karachi. That inspired another colleague to quip, “Shah Sahib, your joining the Sunni Tehrik and then striking an alliance with the MQM can certainly help bridge the rural/urban divide in Sindh and provide it with some spiritual content as well.” SMQ took the joke with a broad grin and instantly made the point that he was not leaving the PPP and that his easy availability for various talk shows these days was aimed at creating and strengthening the demand for ‘inner-party democracy’.

Qureshi Sahib surely needs a platform to launch his career after miserably failing to prove his potential as a ‘populist’ to invisible managers of our political scene. Although Imran Khan had been chasing the same mirage for many months, Qureshi was almost convinced he would beat him because of the  clear edge he enjoyed as a Makhdum of Multan.

We have been made to believe by a group of senior journalists and political commentators that the establishment which is said to have acquired considerable expertise in making or breaking politicians was feeling shy to take on Asif Ali Zardari for fear of the so-called ‘Sindh card’. For spiritual solace thousands of families in various districts of Sindh, venerate the shrine in Multan of which Qureshi is the Makhdum .After saying no to the ministry of water and power, SMQ made an extensive tour of these districts and attracted quite a respectable crowd of disciples. But he forgot that even Pir Pagara who is a bigger Pir than him could never woo his disciples to vote for him. Even hardcore Pagara disciples say, “Our heads are for the pir but not our votes.”

The former foreign minister also wanted to build a populist constituency in urban Punjab by harnessing and fuelling anti-American sentiments. The Raymond Davis episode apparently provided him a rabble-rousing cause. In the end, though, he could not milk the issue; simply for the reason that families of the murdered youth accepted huge amounts of money as Diyat.

SMQ’s struggle for ‘inner-party democracy’ is an obvious non-starter. So, instead of wasting his breath on a lost cause, Raza Rabbani proved far more intelligent as he won the hearts of many with a five-page open letter he read out in the Senate in a voice choked with emotion.

The letter conceded that the state and its institutions had failed to keep the people from feeling helpless and hopeless. To get out of the state of denial, the nation desperately needed to rise up to protect its sovereignty, values and culture. Instead of merely wailing over the prevailing despondency, Raza Rabbani came out with a fourteen-point agenda for course correction. For a dispassionate and fair-minded person, it will surely be difficult to question the validity of steps that Rabbani has prescribed. But his course-correction regime demands elected civilians’ control over the articulation of the national narrative and its acceptance by all state institutions. Noble desire, for sure. But, who will bell the cat?

Published in The Express Tribune, June 15th, 2011.