Consensus government is no panacea

While some would like to dismiss Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain's suggestion about the Sindh situation as a trial balloon, it nevertheless deserves to be taken note of. Talking to reporters on Thursday, the Muslim League chief invited the PPP Parliamentarians and the MMA to join what he called a government of "national consensus" in Sindh.

The idea was immediately shot down by the PPPP and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, the latter being already part of the province's ruling set-up. The MQM not only rejected the proposal; the tone and tenor of its rejection gave an indication of the party's strong opposition to the idea.

Asserting that the MQM was Sindh's second largest party, the statement issued by the coordination committee said no decision about Sindh could work if it did not have the MQM's backing.

It also spoke of "a deep-rooted conspiracy" to destroy the province's peace and hand it over to the military. The MQM has no reason to welcome its traditional rivals - PPPP and the religious parties - into the Sindh government.

Indeed, it has a vested interest in the continuation of the political status quo and would like to use this opportunity to consolidate its position for the next election whenever it is held.

The MMA has welcomed the suggestion. For the six-party alliance, a "consensus" government would mean that it would break the MQM's monopoly over urban affairs, since the MMA also claims to represent a sizable section of southern Sindh's population.

This would only add to tensions within the provincial set-up and worsen rather than help resolve the crisis in Sindh. Indeed, a "consensus" government would be a victory for the MMA, which has been calling for the sacking of the present government.

The MMA's attitude towards the ruling set-up hardened after May 12 by-elections in which 12 people were killed. Then Mufti Shamzai was murdered, followed by the bomb blast in the Ali Raza imambargah and the ensuing disturbances.

The MMA accuses the Sindh government of mishandling the situation. It thus agrees with the PML chief that a consensus government could help improve matters.

Theoretically, a coalition government representing all major parties may be a good idea for a strife-torn province. But it would be futile to think that sworn political enemies would suddenly have a change of heart and work in cohesion to restore law and order and step up development work.

The seeds of political instability in Sindh were laid immediately after the election in October 2002 when the PPPP, the largest party in the assembly, was kept out of power.

In fact, as PPPP president Amin Fahim has said, an ISI team worked behind the scenes till a government excluding the PPPP was in place. The same kind of manipulation kept the PPPP out of the federal government.

The recent spate of violence in Karachi has resulted from acts of terrorism. There is no guarantee that terrorists will stop killing and maiming once consensus government takes charge.

Even the best government cannot anticipate mob violence as a sequel to massacres of one kind or another. The lesson that the generals should draw from the present situation should be obvious - the people's mandate should he honoured.

Pakistan's history is full of debacles stemming from dismissals of governments commanding a majority in assemblies or trying to deny majority parties the right to govern.

CIA director's resignation

The resignation of CIA director George Tenet comes at a time when a congressional commission is about to release its report on the agency's intelligence failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks and its faulty dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Mr Tenet's resignation also follows the announcement of premature retirement by his deputy of operations, James Pavitt. With the two top CIA officials bowing out, hardliners within the Bush administration like Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld must be feeling satisfied with the outcome, which they hope will now deflect much of the blame for perceived intelligence lapses on 9/11 and Iraqi WMDs from President Bush, vying for another term in the White House.

But it remains uncertain whether scapegoating like this at this stage will significantly influence the outcome of the presidential elections. The scandalous Iraq dossier prepared by the CIA at the behest of the Bush administration hawks and presented to the Security Council by Mr Colin Powell in support of America's unilateral action are failures that should be shared equally by Mr Tenet as head of the CIA and President Bush as head of the administration.

Given the imminent release of the congressional report on the subject, it won't be long before the sheen of what is seen as success by the hawkish Defence Department and the Pentagon by sacrificing Mr Tenet, or blaming the CIA as a whole, wears off.

But the point is that information from the CIA was used selectively and was twisted to justify a certain course of action that was morally wrong. Mr Tenet's resignation of firing can only be seen abroad as confirming the fact that the Bush administration attacked Iraq on uncertain premises and has since not only destroyed that country but put so much else in danger.

Murree on the chopping block?

The haste with which the Punjab Assembly passed a bill to establish the so-called 'New Murree Development Authority' reflects the typical official apathy and disregard when it comes to environment-related issues.

The new law empowers the Punjab government to develop land in and around Patriata, which lies on way to Murree. As part of the development plan, thousands of trees will have to be cut down to make way for the housing scheme that the government intends to build there eventually.

There are several good reasons to oppose this move. For starters, anyone who has been to Murree in the past few years will have seen the hills completely denuded of their tree cover. The hill station is not what it used to be, say, even a decade ago.

Mostly crowded with domestic tourists, many of them with little civic sense and going about littering the place, Murree cries out for stemming the rot if only local authorities would heed the call. The hill station is slowly becoming indistinguishable from any polluted urban centre.

As for developing a New Murree, this certainly is not being done for the benefit of the middle class but for those who will be able to buy expensive property in the hills outside Islamabad.

Either that, or it will be developed to exploit the area's tourism potential. In any case, the bill should have been properly routed through the assembly; it should have been placed before a parliamentary committee to discuss its pros and cons and to ascertain the views of the opposition.

The proposed housing development will only rob Murree further of its natural beauty and create a permanent imbalance in its ecosystem, thereby denuding the place of its charm as a tourist resort.