government). Siding with Zardari could mean an ‘end of a road from which no exit is possible’.
Here’s what’s on. One: the GHQ has turned its guns towards Asif Ali Zardari. Two: the GHQ desires Nawaz Sharif’s ‘helping hand’ in the GHQ’s Operation Clean-up Sindh. Three: Syed Qaim Ali Shah has put it on record that the Rangers are “acting beyond their authority and mandate as assigned to them under law”. Four: The Rangers claim that they derive their authority and mandate from the decisions of the Apex Committee. Five: Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan has gone on record that the apex committee is not a legal reality.
The GHQ, in order to remain credible and affective, would have to act above the political as well as the geographical divide. The social media is already asking: “if financially motivated nonviolent white collar crime was restricted to Sindh?”
The Sindh Rangers may want to claim that they went into SBCA looking for terrorist links but it was the Sindh Rangers who briefed the anti-terrorism court that Sultan Qamar Siddiqui, the VP Fishermen’s Cooperative Society, allegedly gave “70 percent share of the corruption money to Bilawal House”. SBCA, in essence, has little to do with terrorism; it’s more about a hundred billion a year.
Can the GHQ do a complete clean-up without a legal mandate to do the clean-up? In Sindh, the gap between de facto (read: what the Rangers are doing) and de jure (read: Rangers’ legal mandate) is widening. Over the medium to long term, for the GHQ to achieve its mission goals the ever-widening gap between de facto and de jure realities would have to be bridged.
In a nutshell: the GHQ wants to clean-up Sindh. Asif Ali Zardari and Altaf Hussain want to maintain the status quo. The GHQ does not have the legal mandate to clean-up Sindh. The GHQ wants to use Nawaz Sharif’s mandate to clean-up Sindh. For the GHQ, time is of the essence. For Nawaz Sharif, postponing the decision to an ever-postponing future is the best policy.
How about a grand compromise – an “agreement or settlement of the dispute reached by each side making concessions”? How about an NRO 2015?
A compromise, I have been told, is the “art of dividing a cake in such a way that everyone believes he has the biggest piece.” After all, the cake here is the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
The writer is a columnist based in Islamabad.
Email: farrukh15hotmail.com. Twitter: saleemfarrukh