Mission: Survival
The wolves are at the nation’s door in a pack and our house is burning from within. Instead of strengthening the nation from within and without we are engaged in an internecine quarrel that feeds the fire, does not quell it, that invites external interference, does not deter it. One does not need to look far for consequences, the plight of Muslims at the hands of majority Hindus in India to the East, at the hands of the Indian Occupation Forces in Kashmir to the North East and at the hands of fellow Muslims to the Northwest in Afghanistan, all serving as gory examples in graphic detail of the apocalypse staring us in the face.
With the deepest respects for the Supreme Court, whatever decision is given, the winners would use their incumbency to “guarantee” victory in the general elections. This will not satisfy the requirements of lasting electoral peace, may indeed further polarize the political crisis and create a Catch-22 situation. The major political parties would be helpless as long as power remains firmly in the hands of the Provincial Governments which are not really representative, which is why all the parties other than Chatta’s PML are asking for dissolution of the Provincial Assemblies and the appointing of Caretaker Provincial Governments on the lines of the Centre. Which is probably why PPP is talking about dissolution in the same breath as about a possible election alliance with Chatta’s PML!
Death of a Moderate
Azeem Tariq, Chairman MQM and lately leader of his own MQM faction, was brutally murdered in his own house by unknown assailants in the early hours of May Day in a Gang land-type assassination reminiscent of the worst days of Chicago mob warfare. Remaining underground after the army action to restore law and order in the urban areas of Sindh in June 1992, he had emerged from hiding a few months ago and gradually distanced himself from his former colleague and charismatic leader of the MQM, Altaf Hussain, now in self-imposed exile in London. In the past few days before his death, Azeem Tariq had been vocally critical of Altaf Hussain, laying out facts hitherto suspected but not otherwise widely evidenced, that the MQM had been essentially a creation of our intelligence agencies and that he, along with Altaf Hussain, had been regularly receiving money from them particularly during the MQM’s formative years. In countries where democratic institutions are seldom allowed to flourish, intelligence agency sponsored political parties are not a strange phenomenon.