How to disown an inconvenient appointment

ANP legislators feel betrayed, cheated and taken for granted by the PPP.

ISLAMABAD:

With fiery speeches and rabble rousing remarks, both, within Senate and while talking to cameras outside the parliament house, ANP legislators engaged and excited reporters of 24/7 channels.

They feel betrayed, cheated and taken for granted by the PPP, which seems to have conceded to whatever the MQM had been demanding in the context of restoring local governments in Sindh.

The fury of ANP senators clearly suggests an unraveling of the coalition that Asif Ali Zardari had painfully built by ceaseless cajoling and appeasing through compromise since the holding of elections in 2008.

Now is the time to think about the next election, however, and each component of the ruling alliance desperately needs to “fire up its base”. But the ANP has nothing else to sell to its supporters other than the real or imagined grievances of Pashtuns living in Karachi.

The focus on the ANP’s conduct on Friday also overshadowed another, very interesting happening in the National Assembly.

The question hour was mostly connected to the finance ministry, but members felt annoyed for not seeing Dr Hafeez Shaikh in the house.

Sharing their annoyance, Deputy Speaker Faisal Karim Kundi also remarked that Shaikh had been habitually staying away from the house.

He is seldom available to address issues raised by public representatives.

As the chief whip, Khurshid Shah, had to explain “the arrogant disregard of this house by the finance minister.”

The sweet-talking friend-to-all from Sukkur, Khurshid Shah, is always quick to invent excuses, but he didn’t feel motivated enough to defend the finance wizard from Shikarpur.

He, rather, astonished the press gallery by ‘humbly’ admitting that Shaikh’s dealings with public representatives were arrogant. Perhaps he hates to sit in an elected house and answer questions related to his ministry.

“As an economist, he (Shaikh) can easily earn good money by other means. Why he continues to enjoy life as a minister if not interested to perform, as per demands of his office?” Khurshid Shah did not finish there.

He urged the chair to summon a meeting of the House Advisory Committee on Tuesday to figure out ways to “discipline the finance minister.”

Khurshid Shah’s scathing remarks made “breaking news” for reporters in the press gallery. I was not surprised, however.

For more than two months, various sources who had been having one-on-one meetings with President Zardari kept telling me that the president felt “let down by Dr Sheikh.”

Until some weeks ago, rumors were rife in power-driven drawing rooms of Islamabad that invisible setters of our power scenes had decided to install a government of “honest, able and patriotic technocrats.”

Instead of holding elections, the rumored government was supposed to focus on restoring the economy by taking tough and long-term decisions. The same rumour compelled many to feverishly ‘spot’ the person who could head this much-talked about government.

An old buddy of President Zardari had a long meeting with him in those days.

When I approached him to find out what was cooking in Zardari’s mind, he revealed to me that the president believed that Hafiz Shaikh had also been “lobbying for installation of a government of technocrats with obvious ambitions of heading it.”

To another visitor in mid-Ramazan, Zardari conceded with agitated bitterness that “appointing Shaikh as the finance minister was a big mistake of mine. I would not have done it, if aware that his wife was an American.” Someone also told me that the president seriously believed that the economy could not take off under his watch “because none of my successive finance ministers were ever willing to reduce interest on bank borrowing to kick-start the frozen dhanda (business).”

Early last month, a blunt but friendly journalist asked Zardari why he had been “bad mouthing the finance minister. After all, none other than you had appointed him.” In his defence, the president could only reveal that “they” had asked me to either take Hafiz Pasha or Hafeez Shaikh as the finance minister when Shaukat Tareen resigned. “I did not think Pasha was suitable and thus, did not resist Shaikh. I also did it for the fact that Syed Khurshid Shah had also been promoting him.”

Little wonder, Syed Khurshid Shah has viciously availed the opportunity to “disown” Shaikh on Friday.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 8^th, 2012.