ISLAMABAD: The real object of any chess game is to bring down the King. Our King has surely positioned his pawns, his knights and his bishops in front protecting him from any frontal attack. The King has already sacrificed a knight from the City of Sufis. Another Makhdoom from the city that hosts the ‘Desert Palace’ is prepared to become the King’s sacrificial lamb. The next pawn in line is a Raja from Gujar Khan. Then there is this bishop from Lalamusa. How many lambs would it take to ‘taketh away the sins of the King’?
Pakistanis love watching great players play and President Zardari has been one of the best players we have seen. The King has proved to be a superb strategist who thinks of defence and offence at the same time. The King lets his reputation fall where it will but never lets his guards down.
Approaching the finish line of his first term, the King, on the eve of Benazir Bhutto’s 59th birth anniversary, said, “The era of packing the Parliament through the back door … is over for all times…” and that the people of Pakistan would not allow that to happen. For the record, no one came out when the Gilani from the City of Saints fell.
Brigadier Faheem Ahmed Khan is a serving one-star officer of the Pakistan Army who happens to be the Regional Director of the Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF). Can the brigadier issue arrest warrants of a nominated prime ministerial candidate without the explicit permission of his chief? Remember, “Poor is the man whose pleasures depend on the permission of another.”
So close to the finish line, with adrenalin pumping, the King is overlooking the play in which his pawns and his knights are being hunted-hunted by players in uniform and in robes. The King has faced-and successfully dodged-many checks over the past four years. The King, under direct attack, is being threatened with capture once again. What else is left in the King’s arsenal to meet this new threat? Is the uniformed player going for a checkmate? Can the King avoid being captured?
Why is the King under attack? The probability is that he is being forced into accepting what he isn’t otherwise willing to do. An interim government perhaps- that may not be all that interim after all.
The ANF has put the sacrificial lamb from Mianwali Qureshian out of the race. The pawn from Gujar Khan is more of a rented power than the chief executive. The bishop from Lalamusa may not be accepted to MQM. All that sounds like a perfectly scripted deadlock.
To be certain, pawns, knights, bishops and lambs are all prepared to ‘sacrifice their political convictions for the convenience’ of the King. Remember what Artemus Ward, the great American humour writer, said, “I have given two cousins to war and I stand ready to sacrifice my wife’s brother.”
Can anyone hear the new King sing: I’m gonna be the main event; Like no King was before; I’m brushing up on looking down; I’m working on my roar.