POREG VIEW: Some reports from Islamabad said the minister for defence production Abdul Qayum Jatoi was sacked; some other dispatches said he himself had resigned. Whether he himself has resigned or was sacked, Jatoi is out as the price for his vitriolic attack on the army and the chief justice of the country.
Targeting Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry is understandable since the CJ’s activism has become a nightmare for the Zardari government but the outburst against the army is bizarre, to say the least. Being a seasoned politician, Jatoi knows what is political blasphemy in Pakistan.
So for him to say, “We provided the Army with uniform and boots not to kill their own countrymen, kill Nawab Sahib (Bugti) and Benazir Bhutto,” there must be valid grounds.
The demand for a separate Seraiki province has gained much steam. It offers him a platform if he enters the fray with a party of his own.
It is also possible that in the prevailing fluid situation, he wants to brighten up his fortunes by picking up the long simmering Baloch cause. The presence of top Baloch leaders like Nawab Talal Bugti when Jatoi spoke to a group of journalists in Quetta on Friday lends credence to this view.
But Talal Akbar Bugti, President Jamhoori Watan Party, (JWP), is quick to distance himself from Jatoi. he has held former president Pervez Musharraf, and five army officers guilty of murdering his father and asked CJ to punish them. He also appealed to the army chief Kayani to exert pressure upon the government to locate 13,000 missing Balochis.
Two conclusions follow from the above narrative.
One Baloch leadership is divided as before.
Two Jatoi became a pawn in a much larger game of shadow boxing to send a message to the army and the judiciary alike that there is latent anger in the body politic at the these two institutions and as such they should not try to disturb the political equilibrium.
Brinkmanship poilitics? If so, who is the author – dapper Gilani or ten percent Zardari? Looks both are together in this swim or sink flood tide, for the present.
