SHAFAQNA PAKISTAN (Shia News Agency)
Certainly, this Saturday’s mayhem in Lahore and other parts of Punjab was easily avoidable. Only sagacity and tolerance were needed. But the Punjab government showed acute paucity of both. If nothing else, the Model Town blood-soaked episode could have told this government of Shahbaz Sharif that force is not the way to deal with a charged mob. That is rather a dicey affair, as violence begets violence. That saga had underscored emphatically that it is always advisable to tackle such demonstrations with the least show of force. Had indeed the administration let Tahirul Qadri go ahead with his contemplated day of Model Town’s martyrs, no heavens would come down crashing. In all probability, the day would have passed off peacefully. And if violence had broken out, held to account in that event in the popular opinion would have been none else but Qadri.
But with its administrative bandobust, the Punjab government has itself invited the trouble upon it. Not that Qadri is all blameless. Whatever puerile justification he may coin up, on no valid ground whatsoever can he uphold the carrying of sticks by his party activists. Indeed, one channel showed a youngster unsheathing a pretty long knife and brandishing it stealthily for the camera to show. Even Qadri’s own fiery outbursts persistently over these past several days were hard to accept. His threatening tones were quite unsettling. And what could have gone through rather peacefully had been turned into a potent catalyst of mayhem days ahead by the ruling hierarchy of Punjab with its own scurrilous savaging of Qadri and threats of slapping cases on him.
What was the point in accosting him and hauling him over the coals? If he had committed some offence, he should have been brought before the court to stand trial. Instead of doing that, the Punjab hierarchy itself did a lot to charge the atmosphere in the province with feverish emotions and frayed tempers. Blinded by their obvious intent to get Qadri, the hierarchy couldn’t perceive that with its shenanigans and prankish antics, it was creating the conditions for the violence to break out certainly and disturb peace and tranquility in the province. Indeed, so carried away was it by its frenzy that it couldn’t grasp even inherent contradictions in its anti-Qadri outpourings. As for one, it assailed him throughout with his dual nationality of Canada, realising not that not only have the citizens of dual nationality been imported here over the time to man the post of the prime minister and other important state positions, but its own many a grandee hold far more assets abroad than at home. Though these eminences may not be holding any dual nationality, the crucial issue of conflict interest could be no lesser relevant imperatively in their cases for the very fact that they hold their enormous treasures and own splendid palaces, chateaus, luxury apartments and bustling businesses and enterprises in foreign lands. Thus, only technically they could be different from Qadri, but practically they are not. In the real sense, both are sailing on the same boat.
In any case, neither Qadri nor the Punjab satraps have behaved any responsibly. Both have been utterly unmindful of the nation’s stability, security and peace. Both stand condemned in the eye of the mass of the people. The Punjab government earned the people’s mass-scale scorn for bringing almost the entire province under the blockade, ending up in a huge public inconvenience and discomfort. Qadri’s activists definitely took law into their hands in many a place, indulging in arson and violence, attacking police and burning police stations and police buses. None of this could be defended with any sophistry. These were wholly illegal and unlawful acts. All this could have forestalled, had the Sharif Brothers given way to sanity and wisdom to dictate their acts and thoughts. But Qadri was obviously an intolerable anathema to them, for whatever reasons. They visibly were out to get him at any rate. And Qadri showed no lesser aversion for them. He too doesn’t seem ready to settle for anything short of their ouster.Whatever be it, the real loser in this Qadri-Sharif Brothers clash are none else at all but the people of this country, the mass of whom lives in abject poverty, squalor, deprivation, denial and disease. Even in the best of the times, they were getting only long pious vows for their emancipation and uplift, no tangible lasting means to get rid of the oppressive conditions of their miserable lives. And over the past several days they have been just drowned into total oblivion while the fracas of Qadri and Sharif Brothers hog all the official and private limelight. But when would they, indeed the whole lot of the elitist political tribe, know that this country is no sultanate for whose apportionment the princes fight and its people are not the subjects and slaves of any royal. Neither it is an estate of any Nawaz, Shahbaz, Qadri, nor is it a game park of any princes. They all must stop taking the people for a ride. For, so besieged are they by their own flunkies that they do not even know that a people’s storm is brewing fast on the street to blow over all the pretenders posing themselves to be their leaders.
pakistan.shafaqna.com
