The BackBencher: Sharjeel Memon objects, milord

KARACHI:

And on the second day, they spoke.

On Monday, Sindh’s legislators did not get the chance to speak because the session had ended early in honour of their late colleague, Abdul Salam Thaheem. Except for MPA Rafique Engineer, who was overheard cracking jokes about forced-conversion cases:  “Ab to yeh aurtein apne lovers ke saath court jaayeingi” (now these women will go to court with their lovers). There was barely a peep.

But on Tuesday, they more than made up for it. So in love with the sound of their own voices, the MPAs droned on and on about issues that have been discussed repeatedly in the assembly, put questions they could easily ask on the sidelines of the assembly proceedings or check up online.

The loudest of them all was MPA and former information minister of Sindh, Sharjeel Inam Memon, who quit in disgrace over his public support for former Sindh home minister Zulfiqar Mirza. While he has been mum in the assembly for months, on Tuesday he finally let loose.

In a speech cleverly designed to invite criticism, if not a contempt case, and a way to prove that he was loyal to both, the king and the party, Memon ranted about the Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. There was no skeleton that wasn’t dragged out from that cupboard of political secrets, no family tie not revisited, no allegation left unmentioned. “The chief justice takes suo motu notice in a second about Atiqa Odho’s two bottles of alcohol but does he not see anything else?” Memon asked. “Ziaul Haq died but his spirit passed onto Ghulam Ishaq Khan, then Farooq Leghari, then Pervez Musharraf and now we all know where it is.”

“The chief justice said that he won’t call politicians to the court until he is satisfied,” Memon said, talking about the proceedings of the Mehrangate case. “But he calls in the president in two minutes!” Among many feverish comments, one was that former prime minister Nawaz Sharif would be acquitted of charges of taking money from the Inter-Services Intelligence to help defeat the Benazir Bhutto-led Pakistan Peoples Party in the 1993 election.

Memon continued picking on everything and everyone from Chaudhry’s son and his brother-in-law (Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah) to his role in the judiciary during the Musharraf regime. By the end of it, even Speaker Nisar Khuhro struggled to understand why Sharjeel Inam Memon was talking in the first place. “We will not bear this [treatment],” Memon shrieked. “When did I tell you to bear this?” Khuhro said, as if suddenly reminded that he could be drawn in as well for contempt charges. “Go ahead and move a resolution against Nawaz Sharif if you want.”

By the end of it, even those who gave Memon a cold shoulder publicly were thumping their desks in support. No one seemed surprised though, and given the increasing hostility of Pakistan Peoples Party in Sindh towards the judiciary, it is probably part of a grandiose plan that mere mortals would struggle to understand. Will the king be rewarding Memon or welcoming him back to a cherished inner circle? Memon can only hope his theatrics have paid off.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 25^th, 2012.