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EDITORIAL: Retreat over NRO

After a high level meeting of the ruling alliance at the Presidency on Monday, the PPP government has decided not to bring the controversial National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) to parliament for a vote. This is clearly a reversal but one which could have been avoided had the ruling party consulted its allies beforehand. It is quite apparent that the NRO as a bill was brought to the relevant committee of the National Assembly without making sure that all the numbers needed were in hand.

The withdrawal will not put an end to the “dangers” that the NRO represented to the map of power brought about by the 2008 general elections. After the debacle caused by an aggressive withdrawal of the MQM from the pro-NRO consensus, the next crisis in the offing is the march of the opposition to a no-confidence vote. The PML-N, whose chief is determined to start a Long March on the ordinance, is no longer averse to the thought of a mid-term change, whether through a new general election or through the ‘minus-one’ formula under a ‘national government’, possibly with Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani in the driving seat.

Monday night, the MQM seemed overly righteous about the NRO, which betrayed some other long-brewing disagreement between the PPP and Mr Altaf Hussain. The disagreement was definitely not on the NRO. Had that been the case, the MQM would have taken a position on it long ago. It says the MQM members supposed to be let off the hook by the NRO were never really affected by it. It insists that all the cases were criminal and were reviewed by the courts and struck from the record. Mr Altaf Hussain, who spoke in some detail to the TV channels, kept emphasising that his party was not targeted for corruption, hinting that the PPP government was in the dock for corruption, not only under the NRO, but also because of its current performance.

The depth of the MQM alienation from the PPP could be grasped from the way the MQM chief kept using the “sacrifice” innuendo for President Asif Zardari, which the media took to mean that he was actually asking the PPP chief to resign as president. This can only mean that the two allied parties had engaged in some kind of polemic over the sharing of power — most probably in Sindh — and had failed to resolve it despite the several meetings the MQM top leaders had with President Zardari over matters in Karachi. Mr Hussain was angry but was at pains to hide his anger behind the justifications he offered for not supporting the government on the NRO.

Had someone in the PPP looked deeper into the NRO imbroglio he would have examined the options of a power-denied MQM. It was a question of whether the PPP should give the MQM what it wants in Karachi or face the NRO alone. It is obvious that the PPP took it for granted that the MQM will not be able to go against the NRO because of the extent to which it had benefited from it. It forgot that the MQM was disciplined enough to take the fallout from going against the NRO to pressure the government in Islamabad. It is because of the cadre discipline of the MQM that it has been able to take the bitter pill of opposing the NRO in order to challenge the PPP’s decisions in regard to the governance of Karachi. The intensity of the PPP-MQM clash is reflected in the latter’s decision to vote against the passage of the NRO.

Pakistan will be further destabilised from now on. The PML-N will muster the forces intent on overthrowing the government and will move to ask the government to take a confidence vote. Its pious assertions to the contrary, it will push the country towards another general election while the Taliban have passed to the phase of targeting innocent citizens wherever they find them in large gatherings. Taking the PPP government as ‘pro-America’, they will most likely spare the Long March agitation of the grand opposition, if it comes. Faced with this, the remaining allies will rethink their political strategy and make the paucity of numbers in parliament more glaring for the PPP. Meanwhile there is always the “peaceful” alternative of going to the Supreme Court, which is likely to strike the NRO down as being violative of the spirit of the constitution. *

SECOND EDITORIAL: Indian ‘evidence’ in South Waziristan

Information Minster Qamar Zaman Kaira and Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Director General Athar Abbas have jointly vowed having “found concrete evidence of New Delhi’s involvement in the militancy in South Waziristan”. It has been decided to bring the matter to the attention of the Indian government without deviating from the policy of seeking a peace dialogue with New Delhi.

What is the evidence? Large quantities of Indian arms and ammunition, literature, medical equipment and medicines recovered from Sherwangi near Kaniguram. This is the place where the Uzbek and other foreigners had located themselves after the army launched the Rah-e-Nijat operation in South Waziristan. The foreigners have left the Kaniguram area and have relocated themselves in North Waziristan. Because of the suddenness of evacuation, they have had to leave behind the telltale signs of where they were getting their logistical support from.

India is not going to say “sorry we did it”. It is going to label the ‘findings’ as ‘staged’ by Pakistan to shift the blame for cross-border terrorism on to New Delhi. A similar case of Indian interference in Balochistan has been denied by India, but the international community, keen to see Pakistan succeed in clearing its Tribal Areas of terrorism, is gradually becoming aware of what the Indian policy in Afghanistan is doing to their efforts.

Talking to India through a protest note will not do. The NATO-US states, now deployed in Afghanistan, have to be brought in on the implications of what India is doing. New Delhi is following a strategy that is going to hurt India in the long run. This must be made clear to the global alliance against terrorism. *

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