The Year of the Boot?

These were scenes straight out of some 1990s Bollywood movie in which towards the end of the show the junta (public) comes out on the streets to take matters into its own hands and beats the hell out of the bad guys. Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim, ex Chief Minister of Sindh under Musharraf rule, was a very frightened man on Monday, trying to run for his life and escape from the clutches – and shoes – of the mob that was trying to get their hands on him outside the Sindh Assembly in Karachi.

The scene in which somebody succeeds in hitting him hard on his face with a shoe has been shown countless times by all TV channels. This was after he had taken oath as MPA inside the assembly hall where someone else also threw a shoe at him (and missed) from the visitors’ gallery.

Later when someone interviewed a couple of women MPAs, instead of condemning the incident they started lamenting that they had not managed to get their own hands (read shoes) on him!

To give the devil his due, Arbab Rahim during his tenure as Chief Minister had been very vocal about his hatred for and criticism of Benazir Bhutto, had accused her of corruption and even went as far as to say that from a religious point of view the “leadership of a woman – and therefore BB – is a curse!” All this obviously seems not to have gone down well with the public.

Then the mob-and-shoe nightmare continued yesterday, this time in Lahore, with Sher Afgan Niazi being the target when he was visiting his lawyer’s office – in this case the mob supposedly comprised of lawyers from the ongoing lawyers’ movement. Niazi, also an ex-minister of the Kings party, had been a very vocal critic of the movement aimed at restoring the judges suspended by Musharraf in Nov 2007. 

He was confined in his lawyer’s office for a good many hours before Aitzaz Ahsan, President of the Supreme Court Bar Association and a leading figure of the movement reached the spot to assist in getting him out to safety. Niazi managed to make it, however not before being severely punched, manhandled and “shoe-d” by the crowd on his way into the ambulance that had come to his rescue.

What is going on? These sudden incidents seem a bit suspicious. If there was so much mob-rule how come no minister was manhandled in this manner while in power? Surely the same could have been done then when public frustration was at its peak.

In any case these incidents can in no way be condoned. In Arbab’s case especially it is totally and completely deplorable and shameful that such an act was allowed to occur in the place where our representatives take the solemn pledge to protect the constitution and maintain law and order!!

Benazir Bhutto herself had only responded to Arbab’s accusations by taking strong exception in the media to his comments and sending him a legal notice of defamation, which was the correct course of action and response. Those jialas and supporters of BB who are defending the attack on Arbab are simply not helping BB’s cause. They have a much higher responsibility, especially after her death, to ensure that order is maintained at any and all cost and that we move on as a nation on the path of reconciliation and real democracy that BB envisioned.

In Lahore Aitzaz Ahsan has now handed in his resignation from the SCBA post, saying he is ashamed of being a part of a movement which can behave in this irresponsible and violent manner. While he admits that he recognized a number of lawyers in the crowd, he also maintains that he saw a number of police personnel in plain clothes as active participants of the rowdy mob. 

Could this be a planned move by the opposition to sabotage the new government and the lawyers’ movement just when things seems to be settling and perhaps moving closer to restoring the judges?

Is it the King at work? We shoed…oops should I mean, try to find out.