Daily Times Editorial Jan 11, 2013

Elections date Maulana Tahirul Qadri’s deadline to the government to carry out constitutional and electoral reform expired yesterday. We await the Maulana’s next move, with an eye on his threatened (and to some threatening) long march on Islamabad come January 14. Meanwhile the PPP’s senior leadership met under the chairmanship of President and co-Chairperson of the party Asif Ali Zardari in Karachi on Wednesday to assess the political situation that has emerged in the wake of Qadri’s storm (in a teacup?). The meeting reiterated the resolve of the party not to allow any attempt to postpone the upcoming elections. A four-member committee comprising senior ministers has been formed to conduct discussions with the country's political forces, including the PML-N Punjab government. This step assumes greater significance in the light of President Zardari’s announcement yesterday that the Assemblies will complete their tenure on March 16, and be dissolved on that date. Although no date for the polls accompanied the announcement, according to the constitution, there is a time limit of 90 days to hold the elections from the date of dissolution of the Assemblies. That takes us to mid-June, an unfavourable season for holding polls because of the summer heat. So the window of decision runs from March 16 to June 16, implying any date could be decided during this timeframe. What is awaited is a consensus agreement on the caretaker prime minister and setup, for which, as noted above, the four-member negotiation team of the PPP will be centre-stage. The other significant statement emanating from the PPP leadership meeting is the reiteration of the government’s resolve to maintain law and order and protect the life and property of citizens. In this context, Islamabad’s commercial heart, Blue Area, is being considered too valuable and sensitive (because of proximity to all the top government institutional buildings at the top of Constitution Avenue) to be allowed as a venue for the long march. Resistance, according to Interior Minister Rehman Malik, is also coming from the businessmen of Blue Area, which is set to be shut for three days to avoid any untoward development. The traders, again according to Rehman Malik, have underlined to the minister that if the Qadri march is allowed, or tries forcibly to enter Blue Area, they and their families, numbering some 60-70,000, will come out to resist the marchers. The business community of Blue Area fears damage to their properties from a largish crowd fired up by the fiery Maulana, as well as the threat of attacks on the marchers, a threat confirmed by Rehman Malik as well as the Punjab Counter-terrorism Department. Maulana Qadri though, is still frothing at the mouth that the federal and Punjab governments are resorting to undemocratic methods to thwart the long march, and warns of a backlash if the march is obstructed. There is little or no evidence that either the federal or Punjab government is doing any such thing. On the contrary, they seem to have taken a political decision to allow the march within the bounds of the law and peaceful assembly, an inherent right of all citizens that has been upheld by the Islamabad High court in a petition seeking a stay against the Qadri march. Meanwhile President Zardari has reportedly summoned all the PPP’s coalition partners for a discussion on the Qadri phenomenon, amongst whom the MQM too is included. This may raise a few eyebrows since the MQM has publicly supported Qadri’s march and his ‘agenda’, cloaking it in the revolutionary sounding mantle of a movement against feudalism. So far the MQM remains publicly committed to participating in Qadri’s march. Whether this is the usual MQM tactic of seeking concessions from the PPP through these kind of blackmailing tactics or a serious commitment to Qadri and whatever he is seeking will soon be revealed. PML-N is reportedly mobilising some big guns of the Barelvi school of thought (Qadri’s creed) in the shape of the Ulema Mashaikh Council Pakistan to expose Qadri’s contradictory stances over time on the blasphemy law and his claim that Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) had visited and blessed him in a dream. The Maulana’s past, as those who know him and his history, is a bundle of contradictions, so the expose will not be difficult. The Deobandi school is already doctrinally opposed to Qadri, as Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s statements against our homegrown Don Quixote testify. What windmills then is Qadri tilting against and on whose behest? This is still a grey area, with public opinion and the political class more or less agreed that the deep state is not behind it (unlike in the past) and that Qadri is an agent of the west (see the Tehreek-e-Taliban’s explicit accusation in this regard). However, deep rooted suspicions about the west derived from history aside, logically it does not make sense for the west to go against the grain of its current thrust globally that democracies serve its interests best. Why then would it be trying to upset the democratic applecart through Qadri to bring in a military-sponsored or controlled regime, especially given the west’s problems with our military vis-à-vis Afghanistan, problems that have of late yielded to the breakout of seeming cooperation but a fraught past still hovers over everybody’s head? Reservations over the past shenanigans of the deep state aside, it does not make sense either that the military establishment has suddenly reversed itself on the need for continuity in the political process under a democratic dispensation, particularly the first ever and historic peaceful transition through the ballot box from one elected government that has completed its term to another brought in through free, fair and transparent elections. So the mystery of Qadri and his ‘backers’ remains unresolved so far.