The resignation spectacle

Through its latest move, the MQM has suddenly caused new waves to run through the political space of the nation. On Wednesday, the party tendered its resignations in all three legislatures, the Senate, National Assembly and the Sindh Assembly, all submitted in person. The entire affair can be seen as more than a mere political spectacle, since the context of the resignations is far more serious than the way they were tendered. The MQM has been under serious pressure due to the Karachi operation and its head, Altaf Hussain, had clearly started to lose his cool. Last week, police presented another set of alleged MQM-supported target killers while resolutions were passed against the MQM in almost all provincial and national assemblies. An MQM member was reportedly killed a day before the resignation. The resignation letters themselves raised serious concerns. They spoke of hundreds of MQM members being held by law-enforcement personnel without being formally charged. The resignations said that the MQM agreed with an impartial operation in Karachi, but that the current one was biased against it. Even MQM chief Altaf Hussain stepped back from his recent lashing out at the army and other key institutions on national TV. Having been left cornered, the MQM decided it would follow the PTI tactic of resigning from the assemblies to gain political negotiating ground.
While it appeared that the MQM’s gambit had not worked on Wednesday, the political establishment on Thursday felt it had to do some damage control. The JUI-F’s Maulana Fazlur Rehman was chosen to negotiate with the MQM leadership and ask them to agree to withdraw their resignations. Fazl said he would consult the law before beginning discussions, but the clear indication is that the prime minister does not want the MQM to leave the assemblies. For obvious reasons, the government does not want a new crisis on its hands. What was ironic is that the PTI went into attack mode against the MQM, claiming that there was a fundamental difference in their resignations and the MQM’s. It is hard to agree. The MQM is arguably under much more pressure as a political party, with public demands of it being wiped out having been made recently. A party with 24 elected National Assembly members cannot be treated so lightly. That is what the PML-N appears to have decided too but the country’s military establishment may not be completely on board with demands of political monitoring of the Karachi operation. The pressure on the MQM has forced them to begin disarming themselves. The same is needed from all other Karachi-based parties. The MQM has yet to accept reconciliation gestures by the political establishment and has stood its ground in demanding a judicial commission on the Karachi operation before it considers returning to the assemblies. With the issue yet to be fully resolved, we must express a concern for the sanctity of the assembly and the public mandate of lawmakers. The example set by the NA speaker Ayaz Sadiq for the PTI may now come to haunt the political future of Pakistan. While it would be good to find a compromise with the MQM, are resignations going to be the next spectacle that all political parties are going to play when under pressure? To stop this some strict rules and procedures must be enforced so that the rules are not bent every time there is a new political expediency involved.