Slanging match between Karachi and Islamabad must stop

The slanging match between the interior minister and the leader of the opposition in the NA Syed Khurshid Shah is unfortunate. The latter has, unnecessarily blown out of proportion an issue which, in the first place, should not have been created by his party. Even a layman understands that the PPP as well as other political parties had unanimously agreed that since the police has miserably failed in rooting out terrorism from Karachi the Rangers be given powers to launch an operation against the perpetrators of various types of crimes in the Sind capital and now when some of the alleged criminals nabbed by the Rangers turned out to be prominent members of this party, its leaders have started making a hue and cry that the Rangers were discriminating against them. Small wonder the PPP’s government in Sind has been dilly dallying in giving further extension of powers to the Rangers over which the federal government has rightly shown its concern because if the operation was left in the midway all the good work done hitherto will go down the drain. The stand of the Sind Chief minister that the Rangers had no mandate to zero in on corruption is ridiculous. Any person who aids or abets a terrorist either by bankrolling him or treating him medically in his hospital is also terrorist and corrupt like the person actually committing it. Monetary corruption is also worst type of terrorism that is committed against the economy of the state. Let us hope that the present rift between Islamabad and Karachi would not reach a point of no-return and the provincial government of Sind would not create legal bottlenecks in the way of the Rangers to clean the Augean stables of Karachi.
Meanwhile the rift between the MQM and the PPP on this issue has also widened as the former wants the extension of the Rangers’ operation to the Rural Sind also. If one reads between the lines one feels that this demand of the MQM is motivated more by its desire to get the criminals in the PPP also punished at the hands of the Rangers rather than any goodwill for law and order enforcing agencies.