SINDH Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah is suddenly an angry man. The target of Mr Shah’s ire are the FIA and NAB — federal organisations that are, according to the Sindh government, busy conducting raids against the provincial authorities without the authorisation or support of Mr Shah’s government.

The Sindh chief minister has even vowed to take the matter of granting additional powers to the FIA under federal legislation to the superior courts.

While the centre has claimed that new powers to detain suspects for 90 days have been granted to the FIA are applicable to all provinces and not just Sindh, Mr Shah made it clear that his government believes it has been singled out for punishment.

Unsurprisingly, the MQM has come out in his support and is also concerned by the FIA and NAB investigations. As with virtually everything else in the growing conflict between the centre and Sindh, there is some truth in what both sides are claiming.

Clearly, for all the federal government’s clarifications, there is something Sindh-specific about the FIA and NAB’s recent crusades.

Where are similar actions in the other provinces? Have provincial offices in Balochistan or Khyber Pakhtunkhwa been raided? Has Punjab seen an uptick in investigations into financial fraud or corruption by provincial authorities?

The answer is obvious from the media headlines alone: Sindh appears to be the inordinate focus of interest by federal investigators in recent months.

Add to that the fact that a city-specific operation is in place only for Karachi and that the army leadership has expressed some very blunt opinions about the quality of political leadership in Sindh, and the reasons for the siege mentality of the Sindh government become clear.

While the federal government has for the most part tried to suggest that the many facets of the Sindh crackdown are entirely coordinated and led by the PML-N, there are clear and worrying signs that much of what is happening is occurring at the behest of the security establishment behind the scenes.

A Sindh government that is at odds with not just the federal government but the military is a dangerous development in an ostensibly democratic framework.

Yet, the Sindh government will win little sympathy from any quarter so long as it continues with its hapless ways. That there is epic corruption and mis-governance in the province is no longer questioned by even the most ardent of democrats.

That the Sindh government has done nothing to stamp out corruption in its midst is also not seriously questioned by independent observers.

That the province could take the lead and has the powers necessary to fight corruption and mis-governance is also quite clear.

If Sindh won’t put its own house in order, is it a surprise that the centre should be attempting to do so itself?

Published in Dawn, July 8th, 2015

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