FEW can match the wholesome innocence Maulana Fazlur Rehman exudes. If his backstage antics before the Americans, as revealed by WikiLeaks, were not sufficient proof of his simple, uncomplicated understanding of situations and his own stakes in these, his words to the media on Sunday should further endear him to his fans and raise his chances of landing a powerful national leadership job that everyone now knows he craves. About a month after the JUI-F sat without protest in a joint parliamentary session that resolved to find a commission to probe last month's Abbottabad incident, the maulana now shows how democratic and flexible his party can be on issues of national importance. He is against an Abbottabad commission. In his 'personal' opinion, if the commission finds the military to be at fault, it will be Pakistan and not the military leadership that will suffer. Having spoken like a patriot and indeed as a veteran in the original sense of the word, he next tried to distinguish himself from some others sus- pected of having similar sentiments and ambitions.

An estranged Maulana Fazl has no words of praise for the Gilani government which is a more formal custodian of national interests right now. Instead, he has said the government has created controversy in order to avoid investigating Abbottabad. He appears to see no political mileage accruing from closeness with the set-up he had walked out of after a dispute surrounding the last Haj. What he is more interested in is a renewal of the MMA or the practical council of religious parties that had brought the JUI-F and Jamaat-i-Islami together. JI has been protesting over the Abbottabad raid etc. more vocally than usual, but Maulana Fazl has surmounted even greater differences in the past and reconciled seemingly impossible positions if interests have so dictated.