Ms Benazir Bhutto needs to spend more than just her weekends in Sindh. Her home province is riven with dissension and she is doing nothing to repair the damage. It is not enough to pack Khawaja Tariq Rahim off to Karachi every now and then to assuage Mr Altaf Husain with new concessions so that the MQM is restrained from pulling back from the Karachi Accords and endangering the PPP government in Islamabad.
The Sindh National Alliance is making a strong bid for the hearts and minds of the Sindhis. It is rapidly eating into the PPP’s constituency. However, if the SNA insists on an ethnic charter like that of the MQM, rather than a nationalist one like the BNA or even the ANP, there is bound to be serious trouble ahead. Add to this bubbling cauldron the revival of the right-wing pro-Zia groups and parties, like the Jamaat i Islami and the JUP, and we have all the ingredients of an explosive cocktail which can ignite a prairie fire in Sindh at any time.
The PPP is also bitterly divided in that province. The powerful Makhdoom Khaliquzzaman has already attacked Mr Qaim Ali Shah for being weak and inefficient, while Mr Qurban Ali Shah has gone on record about “the two Zardaris who are devouring the party like termites”. The IJI’s clamour against the first family seems faint compared to the scandalous uproar caused by Mr Shah’s allegations against the Zardaris.
Even if some of the charges against the Zardaris are half true, it is nothing less than a huge national disgrace to our already tottering democracy. The PM’s campaign for accountability will lack credibility so long as she doesn’t clean up her own backyard first. A majority of Pakistanis still wish her well, but it must be remembered that the springs of goodwill for her are not bottomless.