A legitimate demand or open-and-shut case of blackmail?

Although pretending to be sole spokesperson for Karachi, MQM appears to have discovered unbearable limits of crimes.

After disowning and sacrificing one of his closest and oldest friends, Dr Zulfikar Mirza, President Zardari had surely managed many weeks of smooth sailing with the MQM. For another time, however, relations between two major stakeholders of the power pie in Sindh are getting ominously tense for the past two days. Since the late 1980s, ‘BHATTAKHORI (extortions)’ has almost become a norm in Karachi. There always was a visible method behind this menace and main promoters and protectors of this racket were no strangers to big business. Over the years, street crimes also became a norm in the financial hub of Pakistan and cell-snatching makes no news anymore. Although pretending to be the sole spokesperson for Karachi, the MQM appears to have belatedly discovered the unbearable limits of rampant crimes.

Haider Abbass Rizvi made the first move to build the noisy tempo in the National Assembly on this issue Thursday. After delivering an impassioned speech, he had walked out of the house along with his party legislators. While leaving the house, he also forewarned the government that if immediate steps were not taken to deal with BHATTAKHORI, the MQM might decide to stay out of the joint parliamentary sitting that the President was scheduled to address Saturday.

The day after his walkout, the MQM appeared sadistically determined to disrupt the house proceedings. With passionate pleading, Dr Fehmida Mirza convinced them to let her proceed and dispense with the question hour. After extracting the desired concession, she wisely left the chair to facilitate the MQM legislators to their way. Wasim Akhtar, a vocal and diehard MQM legislator, took the floor to wail over the frighteningly spreading menace of BHATTAKHORI. After doing the usual thing, he did not walk out of the house though. He and his comrades stayed put in the house and didn’t let any legislative business to proceed with spirited sloganeering. Besides condemning BHATTAKHORI, they also kept chanting against the “crime protecting (Sindh) government of the corrupt.” Doing so, none of them cared to recall that since the 2008 elections, the MQM had savoured the status of a pampered ally most of the time.

One was not interested to focus on inherent contradictions. The reporter in me was far more eager to find out the real cause behind the resurrected anger and agitation amongst the MQM legislators and cadres. A few journalists claimed that the MQM is angry, simply because the government seems resisting the proposed induction of Mustafa Kamal in the federal cabinet. I refused to believe the naïve-sounding story. Two ministers, while talking to me separately, also tried to make me believe that the MQM was getting jittery because of the presence of Afaq Ahmad in Islamabad. To some extent, they made sense. After all, Afaq, once a diehard face of the MQM during the chaotic times of the early 1990s, is a bad news for his erstwhile comrades. Zardari-Gilani government may not be relishing an effective control over his ‘real handlers.’

Haider Abbass Rizvi had only hinted at the possibility of MQM legislators’ absence from the joint sitting. Wasim went a step further Thursday. Very clear and categorical he was in telling the government that the MQM legislators would not let the President deliver the annual address to parliament, if SOS measures were not taken against BHATTAKHORI. His threat compels one to feel that this time around the MQM has developed problems with the person, plans or intensions of President Zardari. After desperately searching for the real cause, I also found out that Chaudhry Shujaat Hussien had also gone to London. A reliable source claimed that he had a lengthy meeting with Altaf Hussien and the two held an exhaustive brainstorming session. Sources close to Shujaat told this correspondent that the PML-Q leader sincerely desired that the MQM and the PML-Q should collectively bargain to grab patronage-doling ministries for their nominees to ensure sustaining, if not expanding, their vote banks. The noise-making on BHATTAKHORI clearly reflects a well-thought-out plan to build pressure to extract more space from the Zardari-Gilani government. The stories sound plausible, but they do not tell the whole truth. One has to dig deeper and meet more people in the know to find it.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 17^th, 2012.