Zardari puts own house in order

In what appears to be a message to all militant groups and their political patrons, the Sindh government on Monday night banned the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)-affiliated Amn (peace) committee for its involvement in criminal activities and acts of militancy in pursuance of the Supreme Court judgement.
The Sindh government issued the notification to ban the Amn committee after the approval of President Asif Ali Zardari, who while taking an initiative to first put his own house in order before initiating any “action” against militant groups operating in Karachi, had directed the party’s top tier to immediately disband the Amn committee in the provincial capital.
The president had taken this decision at a meeting of the PPP’s core committee also co-chaired by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani. “The president gave clear instruction to disband the Amn committee,” a source privy to the meeting told Pakistan Today.
Former home minister of Sindh and the president’s close aide Dr Zulfiqar Mirza had formed the Amn committee in Karachi as a parallel force of the PPP to take on the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), which, he believed, had been involved in various crimes in the city for years and patronised its own militant wing.
“If we want to deal with militancy in Karachi, we have to disband the Amn committee and dissociate the party from it,” the president was quoted as saying. The source said the president was visibly upset when he referred to Dr Zulfiqar Mirza while discussing the Karachi situation. “He (Dr Mirza) was my friend. accept all his resignations immediately,” the president was quoted as saying, unambiguously suggesting that the former Sindh minister, a childhood friend, was no more with him and the party.
The president discussed the Supreme Court’s judgement on the Karachi situation with his core group and indicated that he would ensure implementation of the verdict. “The court has given us the responsibility and with it comes the authority as well,” the president said. Though he tried to remove doubts that he lacked will to go after criminals associated with political parties in Karachi, his action would, however, speak for his intention.
When the president speaks to his confidants, it is generally a monologue and he touches upon every issue under the sun. While he was discussing the political situation, the source said, the president tacitly indicated his plan of dividing the province of Punjab into two units when he directed the participants to reorganise the party in two provincial setups - one for the south and the rest for the central and northern part. As the president referred to creation of a new province on administrative basis, Raza Rabbani disagreed with him and said the provinces were created on the linguistic, ethnic and cultural basis. “Well, Raza we agree to disagree,” the source quoted the president as telling his party’s constitutional expert, whose shirt he had buttoned up while shaking hands when he had come to chair the meeting.
When a suggestion came to also consider creation of a Hazara province, the president did not agree and said: “Don’t compare South Punjab with Hazara. We can’t say that Hazara is a deprived area and had a similar history of struggle.”
Like an elder, the president also keeps grooming his team and an example of this characteristic is that he categorically told the participants not to make any comment on the Hamza Shahbaz-Ayesha Malik issue. “No politics on personal issues,” he was quoted as saying when his coalition partner, the MQM, had already gone berserk to attack the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in retaliation to Nawaz Sharif’s proposal of proscribing the political parties which sponsored or patronised militancy. The president also focused on the energy situation and an official statement quoted him as emphasising the need to solve this problem on a permanent basis. “The power situation in the country must be improved and not allowed to degenerate into an issue of power politics,” his spokesman Farhatullah Babar quoted him as saying.
The meeting also took stock of the overall political situation with a specific emphasis on the availability of power, economic, and law and order issues with coalition partners and the recent anti-government campaign by the PML-N leadership. It was with reference to the PML-N campaign that the president directed the ministers concerned to solve the energy crisis before it assumes a political crisis.