THE old, dog-eared playbook has apparently still not been discarded. Once again, an individual supposedly behind bars in secure custody has spoken on camera, his words conveniently stoking further the flames of the problems in which the MQM leadership currently finds itself engulfed.

This time around, it is Khalid Shamim — one of the suspects in the Imran Farooq murder case who is detained in Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail — dilating on the back story behind the senior MQM leader’s assassination.

In the video aired on a TV channel on Thursday evening, which was largely addressed to erstwhile mayor and now leader of the newly minted Pak Sarzameen Party Mustafa Kamal, Shamim accused the MQM chief Altaf Hussain of ordering the hit.

According to him, Mr Hussain even voiced his satisfaction at the execution of the ‘job’ to Mr Kamal when the latter went to London to collect Mr Farooq’s body. In the video, Shamim also claimed that the MQM supremo had openly threatened the former mayor.

It is a little over a year ago that the ‘death cell confession’ video of MQM militant Saulat Mirza had emerged, and comparisons are inevitable. Clearly, the powers that be — those who have the wherewithal to film high-profile prisoners in high-security prisons — have learnt nothing.

If at all, this is an even more ham-handed attempt at steering the narrative, with the under-custody individual wearing a headphone, obviously reading from a script and slurring his words in places.

In the earlier instance, the recording of Saulat Mirza contained mostly statements he had already given to a JIT, a video of which was already in the public domain.

The timing of that leak was to discredit the MQM and underscore its alleged excesses, because by then the establishment had decided to act against it with full force.

The latest video too contains neither any earth-shattering revelation nor is it of legal value, given that the statement was not made before a magistrate. But with the money-laundering investigations against the MQM heating up in the UK, the objective on this occasion is perhaps to remind the public of the party’s other alleged misdeeds.

Concurrently, the move could also prove helpful in maintaining pressure on the leader of what is perceived as the establishment’s latest political proxy — the Pak Sarzameen Party — by highlighting his close past association with the beleaguered MQM chief. Old, Machiavellian habits certainly die hard.

Published in Dawn, April 30th, 2016