Yet another committee

The decision to form a committee to monitor the ongoing operation against criminal elements in Karachi erects a wall of fudge as permeable as concrete. The MQM has protested long and loud that it was being unfairly targeted in the operation and had withdrawn its elected members of the federal and provincial assemblies and the Senate by way of protest. The government of Nawaz Sharif and the PML-N sought to calm troubled waters, and sent in the shock troops in the form of Maulana Fazlur Rahman in an attempt to bring the errant members of the MQM back into the parliamentary fold. The result is a commitment to form a committee that yes, will take all on board, pay attention to all stakeholders, particularly those with stakes poised over the vital organs of their opponents, and yes keep a watchful eye on the law-enforcement agencies to make sure that there was not a surfeit of disappearances, unexplained deaths in the night or the wanton extraction of fingernails in the course of interrogation.

Whether this is going to be enough to persuade the MQM members to assume their seats once more remains to be seen, and given the yo-yo-ing of positions taken by the party, there is no guarantee that it will stay seated once back in parliament, Senate and the Sindh Assembly. The prime minister lacks a certain subtlety when it comes to dealing with other political parties, and is positively leaden-footed when it comes to dealing with an entity as capricious as the MQM. He assured the MQM delegation that “their genuine concerns” would be given serious consideration. Decoded, this means that the government will ignore those concerns that are either inconvenient or simply outrageous and attempt to lever the MQM members back to the legislatures via back-channel discussion. Much is at stake, and the political control of Karachi is the prize. The PTI made a significant showing in the last election in Karachi, and the MQM finds its primacy challenged — a messy scenario. When in doubt, form a committee.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 26^th, 2015.

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