The passing of Jam Sadiq Ali will not be mourned by many. The Jam had a typical Sindhi wadera’s contempt for democratic form and morality. In one year, he did more to erode the fabric of Sindhi society than all the nasty feudal and military dictators put together in a decade. He was a wanton agent of the grasping cynics in Islamabad. And they clung to him selfishly even as he lay gasping in the clutches of death.
The political vacuum in Sindh is, if anything, more awesome and daunting today than when the Jam took over as chief minister eighteen months ago. By night, the provincial government should have gone to Benazir Bhutto in 1990. But Islamabad determined otherwise and handed it to Jam Sadiq. But what the Jam has delivered will surely rank as the most bloody, repressive and divisive policies in the annals of Sindh. The fumbling PPP Sindh government from 1988-90, by comparison, looks angelic in retrospect.
Mr Muzaffar Hussain Shah, the new CM, has inherited the Jam’s mantle without any of his predecessor’s devilish attributes. The new CM has only a tenuous hold on office and it is ironic that he should now have to depend for survival on the cooperation of the very PPP that the Jam nearly hounded to death.
The PPP’s support is understandably conditional: get rid of Irfanullah Marwat, halt the MQM’s terrorism and blackmail and stop the repression. Can Mr Shah do it?
Hardly. If Mr Marwat is ordered to pack his bags, the father-in-law will feel slighted. And Mr Shah cannot afford to antagonize the President. If Mr Altaf Hussain is told where to get off, the MQM may unleash ethnic strife all over again. Gen Asif Nawaz won’t like that and Mr Shah can hardly countenance the displeasure of the army. If the MQM is provoked to desert the PM in the National Assembly, Mr Sharif will be most annoyed. And that is the last thing Mr Shah would desire.
How then is Mr Shah going to make his government click? Some obvious jugglery can be contrived in the short term by giving Mr Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi a slice of the cake. But Mr Jatoi’s sights are set on more substantial, medium-term goals in Islamabad. When he receives an appropriate nod, he will stab Mr Shah in the back and precipitate a suitable crisis to be exploited by his mentors. As for the PPP, it is quite clear what the game is: some breathing space is necessary in Sindh in order to marshall its bruised forces before launching a frontal attack later. Consequently, the dissolution of the Sindh assembly is on the cards. In due course, such a crisis could herald an unwelcome fate for the political system in Islamabad.
Which, of course, would bring us squarely back to August 1990 and confirm what many have long argued: that the President cannot sacrifice national interests at the alter of his personal ego, that Islamabad’s dictatorial writ has worn thin in the provinces and a genuine measure of democracy and autonomy should be allowed, that the MQM’s poisonous fangs must be yanked out so that it cannot hold the country to ransom.
The Sindh tragedy has been compounded by the brutalities of Jam Sadiq and the prejudices of Islamabad. Unfortunately, there seems no end in sight to this madness. Mr Marwat is still running amuck with the blessings of President Ishaq. The PM hates the PPP so much that he cannot bring himself to say good-bye to the MQM. Islamabad is so stupidly self-conscious of its centrality that it will not allow for a devolution of power.
Behind the scenes, a dangerous scramble for power is unravelling. The President is playing the COAS off against the PM. The PM is playing the President off against the COAS. And the COAS is matching their every move with an appropriate one of his own. The IJI is on the verge of splitting up, with the Jamaat-i-Islami threatening to sabotage foreign policy. And Mr Jatoi is not playing footsie with Benazir Bhutto for nothing.
If Mr Shah is indeed doomed to falter, will President’s Rule work? No. The President’s flawed logic has brought Sindh to its current impasse. Direct rule from Islamabad will deepen old wounds and draw fresh blood. If the government in Islamabad thinks it can use the intelligence agencies to deliver the province into their laps, they are sadly mistaken. As in the case of the Karachi Steel Mills, they will find they cannot rule without a significant input from the army.
There’s the unfortunate rub. If the army has to be called in to prop up a failing civil administration and curb the corrupt and power-hungry instincts of discredited politicians without a popular base, as well as restrain the opposition and government from clawing at each other, it can only reinforce one obvious historic conclusion. And no one need spell that out.