The doctor just killed his patient, and sued the government for political malpractice. Welcome to the land of confusion.
If you are shaking your head and saying, “What the…!” you are not alone. Ever since Dr Zulfiqar Mirza detonated a dirty bomb on the premises of the Karachi Press Club, the radiation has contaminated areas as far as the Presidency, Aabpara and GHQ. The original target — Nine Zero — is quarantined for now, till it recovers from the shell-shock and undertakes retaliatory measures. Meantime the political landscape is reverberating from the aftershocks of what surely was one of the most dramatic press conferences in recent memory.
So what now? Here is a look at the choices facing the main players:
The president: how does he play this toe-crunching yorker? Two possibilities: 1) He planned the whole thing and is now sitting smugly in his plush office overlooking the Constitution Avenue and twirling his moustache. He has got the MQM on the defensive and struggling to deal with the toxic fallout. Through the good doctor, he has laid bare all the allegations against the MQM that were not fit to print. Now all the dirty little secrets — which were fodder for drawing room conspiracy theories — are a kosher part of the public discourse. The hungry electorate is trying to digest them at the fag end of a month when digestion is normally a serious issue. The firebrand doctor is a hero, or a traitor — depending on your perspective — but like Captain Kirk, he has gone where no man has gone before, and the Federation controlling his Starship is mighty happy.
For his part, the president may have much to smile about — an arch foe painted into a corner, a Sindhi base once again rubbed the right way and a childhood friend reincarnated with newfound credibility. As for the small matter of his interior minister — freshly mauled by the doctor — well he is made of Teflon and rubber: nothing sticks on him, and he does spring back. Friendly fire kills people all the time.
2) Now the president knows what Caesar felt like on the steps of the Roman Senate when he saw Brutus plunging the knife in his back. For all his wily ways, the president will surely have realised that the buck stops at him. If the doctor’s prescription is indeed right, the president knew about the MQM’s machinations and did nothing. This means he was aware — as per the doctor — that the MQM was responsible for numerous killings and also complicit in the alleged American plan to carve up Pakistan, and yet he did nothing. In fact, what he did was to hug the MQM even tighter. By the same logic, if his action (or lack thereof) could alienate his childhood friend to such an extent that he blew the lid on the whole sordid affair, one can imagine the depth of depravity these political games have sunk to. Faced with this bitter reality, the president will either have to discredit his doctor friend, or conjure up a narrative that explains his inexplicable conduct.
The MQM: for starters, the party may want to brush up on the Trojan War story. In the legend, the infallible Achilles was killed when his enemy Paris shot an arrow to the only place where Achilles was vulnerable: his heel. Now Paris was not such a good marksmen, so it is said that the god Apollo guided him. The MQM has clearly been shot in the heel, but is the arrow guided?
The MQM supremo has taken ill and is reportedly confined to his hospital bed, which may mean that the maligned party has a good reason not to rush into a retaliatory mode. The party now faces two stark choices: take the doctor’s prescription and go viral against his party, or absorb the blow and return to the comforting warmth of the treasury benches. If it chooses the first, it may risk the doctor’s allegations taking on a new life of their own through formal investigations and a possible crackdown. If it opts for the second, it may gain a protective shield against its acts of omission and commission but will remain vulnerable to the slings and arrows of an outraged public.
The army: the doctor’s diagnosis included three uniformed powerbrokers who were in the know about the MQM’s alleged links to the devilish American conspiracy to break up Pakistan: Corps Commander Karachi, DG ISI and by inference, the chief of army staff (COAS) himself. It is almost like reading a Fredrick Forsyth thriller. The three gentlemen, apparently, did not do much. Why not? The answer will need to come one way or the other. Their response will need to be articulated. Maybe they did not take the good doctor seriously. Maybe they conducted their investigations and found the allegations incorrect. Maybe they were too busy with other pressing matters. Or maybe prudence prevailed. Nobody knows, but now everybody cares.
The generals must be thinking about the classic hit movie Godfather Part 3 in which Michael Corleone played by Al Pacino utters the famous line:: “Just when I thought that I was out, they pull me back in.”
The doctor: well, he has certainly given a dose of his own medicine to everybody else. Either he has bowled the best yorker of his life, or his own stumps are about to be sent cartwheeling. The doctor now may end up becoming David to the MQM’s Goliath, or he may find himself put out to pasture, grazing on the barren fields of Sindh. If he has truly spoken his mind as per the dictates of his conscience regardless of what the president thinks, then the doctor will cut a lonely figure, riding into the Badin sunset. But if he is indeed the avant garde of the new Zardari politics, the doctor may have indeed conducted the biggest surgery of his life. But he may want to keep in mind the words of Emily Dickinson:
“Surgeons must be very careful,
When they take the knife!
Underneath their fine incisions,
Stirs the Culprit! — Life.”
The writer hosts a primetime show on ARY News. He can be reached at [email protected]