The Backbencher: Make your money and run while the blood flows

Trick, the source said, is to take lots of your constituents, resettle them into a goth, get them to claim ownership.

KARACHI:

I am quite convinced that one of these days a reporter is just going to burst into hysterical laughter and fall off the media gallery into the assembly hall below. The rare moments of intelligent insight in the house are overshadowed by hours of inane debate offered with such earnestness that one would think the MPAs must take us – the observers in the gallery – or their constituents for fools.

Take for example, PPP MPA Bachal Shah, who in an angst-ridden speech posited this hypothetical: Our constituents will ask us before the next elections what did we do about the bloodshed as we sat in the assemblies and the government?

Oh Mr Shah, during your next election campaign, at least you can say with certainty that while you may not have done anything about the bloodshed, several of your leaders did make enough money to last them several lifetimes.

If one source is to be believed, a rather enterprising former minister and several of his old colleagues in the cabinet are quite heavily invested in the let’s-regularise-informal-settlements deal. The trick, the source said, is to take lots of your constituents, resettle them into a goth and get them to claim ownership. This not only serves the party they belong to but also helps the people acquire housing. And the criminals involved in the process get a cut, making it a win-win situation for everyone.

But the spanner in the works has been thrown by the man who everyone claims is the de facto chief minister of Sindh. Apparently he also wants in on this illegally claimed land deal… but to sell off land so vast that I would have to Google to check how many zeroes this would require.

Shah could also tell his constituents that the government spent a lot of time fire-fighting instead of planning. Several people have become such excellent negotiators that they should abandon their political careers and head to the courtroom instead. One such man is MPA Nadir Magsi, reportedly one of the architects of the deal with Baloch tribal leaders, to persuade Uzair Baloch, the head of the banned Peoples Amn Committee, to stop retaliating against the police and eventually ‘surrender’ to the Rangers.

And speaking of the law, MPAs appear to be in a race to be charged with contempt. Pir Mazharul Haq read out a recent report by the International Commission of Jurists on the Supreme Court of Pakistan, which was excerpted by a Sindhi newspaper.

Haq read the article in Sindhi, as well as the Urdu translation, and lamented how the court “interferes” in the government’s work. MPA Arif Mustafa Jatoi asked whether this wasn’t in contravention of Article 68 of the constitution which states that parliament cannot discuss the conduct of a Supreme Court or a high court judge. Deputy Speaker Shehla Raza said it wasn’t a question of conduct but that poor, defenceless Haq was just trying to explain why his department couldn’t function properly. Perhaps Haq could spend more time figuring out why his department is in the dock so often and not invite the wrath of a contempt charge.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 5^th, 2012.