KARACHI, July 27: As major parties flexed their rarely used muscles on Thursday evening to create a storm of sorts in the country’s political teacup, one question that remained unanswered was whether winds of change would eventually knock off the political edifice dexterously crafted by President Gen Pervez Musharraf or would end in achievement of short-term objectives like the removal of this or that government official.
Analysts well-versed with the templates of politics in the subcontinent smiled knowingly when the London-based leadership of the Muttahida Quami Movement sought to take advantage of the political crisis created by the belated, albeit expected, coming together of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy and the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal.
ARD leader Makhdoom Amin Faheem and MMA’s Qazi Hussain Ahmad and Maulana Fazlur Rahman, it was announced, will be meeting here on Friday to “finalise the strategy” in their quest to push through parliament a vote of no-confidence against the prime minister.
The MQM move comes close on the heels of the release of a public letter signed by some of the sympathisers of Gen Musharraf who advised him against simultaneously holding the offices of president and chief of army staff. It also called for a political reconciliation in the country.
Riven by mutual distrust and party differences, government circles showed signs of nervousness when President Musharraf’s chief trouble-shooter, Tariq Aziz, reportedly called the MQM headquarters in London and showed what was euphemistically described by Dr Imran Farooq as “attitude.”
President Musharraf wasn’t unfazed either. Analysts taking part in heated TV discussions quoted sources as saying that an incensed president ordered a probe to find out why his remarks made to the members of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (Sindh) in an in-camera meeting were leaked to the press.
The president was quoted, in a press release issued by the Sindh chief minister’s house on Wednesday, to have said Arbab Ghulam Rahim would remain the provincial chief executive, the objections of his allies and members of the so-called forward bloc notwithstanding.
It is an interesting coincidence that merely a matter of a few weeks ago the chief of army staff felt constrained to make similar remarks about the prime minister at a meeting of the latter’s cabinet members amidst signs of a brewing rebellion, no matter how feeble.
Whether the pressure applied by the MQM will deliver it the desired result, it is clear that the boat’s been rocked. Even in the past, the MQM has given an impression of an uneasy relationship with its allies but has never gone this far. The president may succeed in defusing the situation at least in terms of the MQM but, since he came to power in a bloodless coup seven years ago, this is perhaps the first occasion when he has faced a situation so tricky.
Despite being a military man, General Musharraf has often chosen to tread softly, but it is not clear whether force of events will this time drive him towards something drastic.
