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PPP s estranged leader tells Mehreen Zahra-Malik there are more colours to him than those on his multihued neckties
What do Enver Baig and Zulfiqar Mirza have in common? That the month of August has found both at the receiving end of President Asif Ali Zardari s wrath.
You can t break the ties that bind, sang Bruce Springsteen, and very likely Enver Baig was listening. The close aide of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and a retired senator is almost as well known for his vast collection of flamboyant neckties as he is for playing a significant role in the finalisation of the deal with the United States that eventually lead to Benazir s return from exile in 2007.
But Baig s cheerful, convention-breaking ties have cost him the ire of one man: President Zardari. Soon after Benazir s death, Zardari, the newly self-appointed co-chairman of the Pakistan People s Party, called a routine meeting. The political secretary of the president phoned Baig to invite him. But don t wear a colourful tie, she warned. The boss doesn t like it.
At another party meeting where Baig showed up in a solid black shirt, the flushed secretary ran up to him and asked, Tumbaaznahiaatay? (why don t you listen?)
I ve never understood what to do with AZ, how to make him happy Baig says as he fixes his shiny lime necktie. I ve never understood why he doesn t like me. Maybe its because I ve always called a spade a spade; because I ve questioned my own ministers about corruption; maybe because I was too close to Mohtarma [Benazir Bhutto]. But somehow, AZ has never liked me. And that s that.
Politicians rarely admit mistakes, but Baig, looking back on the eventful decades of his political career, is willing to count his errors. Sporting a blue and white striped shirt and a knot of yellow, he cuts a relaxed, even cheerful figure, and twinges of bitterness creep into his voice only when questioned about his relationship with now estranged friend, Makhdoom Amin Fahim,
and the recent rupture with the PPP.
My career with the PPP began with my friendship with Fahim and ended with his desertion, Baig told The News.
Baig s affiliation with the PPP is indeed as old as his friendship with Fahim whom he met at a car showroom in Dubai in 1971. But the heartlessness of power came in the way of friendship in February 2008 when Baig faced being eliminated from the national political scene if he chose friendship over politics. He did.
The PPP at the time was divided between two camps: those who backed Zardari in supporting Yusuf Raza Gilani for prime minister and a few from the old guard who were cheering for Fahim. Very soon even Fahim s closest friends, realising there were no permanent bedfellows in politics, quietly left his side.
Asked to name his biggest political blunder, Baig replies without hesitation: That instead of joining the Zardari camp after Mohtarma s death, I stayed with Fahim. He was a forty-year-old friend, our wives and kids were best friends. If I had left him, how would I have faced my children?
But some PPP insiders say it wasn t just friendship that kept Baig on Fahim s side. Fahim got him a party ticket for the Senate in 2003, and Baig hoped he would do the same in 2009; Zardari would be much harder to convince, a senior PPP leader told The News.
Late one night in February 2008, a trusted aide of Zardari - party insiders say it was Faisal Butt who would one year later in February 2009 be denied a PPP senate ticket himself - approached Baig with a prepared press statement containing damaging remarks against Fahim. He asked Baig to sign the statement. Baig refused. I didn t realize then that Fahim would abandon me one month later, he says.
Those close to Fahim say it was Fahim s wife who finally intervened between Fahim and Zardari and helped patch things up. A close friend of the family says she subsequently called up Baig to apologise: Enver bhai, we have to run our kitchen.
So while Fahim survived as a political player, Zardari turned his wrath on Baig by not awarding him a ticket for the Senate in 2009. This ostracisation reached its logical conclusion on August 4, 2011, when Baig s basic membership of the PPP was suspended for working against party interest and police. Baig has refused to appeal the suspension.
I find it below my dignity to respond to this letter written by some nobody [Syed Nayyer Hussain Bokhari, President PPP Islamabad]. It should have come from the secretary general, Baig says. And the proper procedure is to issue a show-cause notice and then follow that up with suspension if the response in unsatisfactory. This was like saying, You ve committed murdered; here s your death sentence. The question is, who has been murdered; where s the trial?
Interestingly, the suspension letter came one day after Baig held a meeting with PML-N President Nawaz Sharif. PPP insiders say Baig is expected to join the PML-N soon and has been dealt a pre-emptive strike by the PPP. He had already caused a stir by holding a dramatic meeting with Nawaz in March 2009, without the knowledge or approval of the party leadership, and hardly a day after PPP and PML-N members nearly got into a fistfight in the National Assembly, said a PPP insider. Long ago, Baig lost the ability to balance his independence with his loyalty to the party, and it was no wonder that the higher leadership stopped trusting him.
Former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has also been censured by the party for meeting Nawaz recently but the PPP Punjab s resolution that he be sacked was not okayed by the high command. Qureshi is still valued. He s a big player in Multan, arguably the biggest. The party can t afford to have him fighting against them at a time its already scrambling for support, said a PPP insider. Enver? He s irrelevant. He owes all his political achievements to one person: Mohtarma. And what he forgot was that after Mohtarma he continued to have a constituency of one: the party chief. If he wanted to stick around without a constituency, then at least please the boss. It s simple enough. And look, he s now running after Nawaz.
Baig is noncommittal when asked whether he will join Nawaz now. He says he is speaking to everyone, including the MQM, PTI and smaller parties,. But you go where there is a chance of the party coming to power in the future, Baig admits.
But why would Baig want to join hands with someone so ideologically different? Look, Nawaz signed the Charter of Democracy with Mohtarma, he says. They were determined to do it collectively.
But why hasn t Nawaz been able to work with Zardari?
People who Mohtarma nominated as her murderers even before she died; those who have said, The PPP s motto is Bhutto and lutto (rob) -they are now in the government with the PPP. Faisal Saleh Hayat went to the Supreme Court with corruption charges against Raja Pervez Ashraf, and now sits next to him. Who can work with theses guys? Baig says. We stuck around and faced Musharraf s rule while all these Johnnies defected and held cabinet positions. Now, they re back in the PPP cabinet. Faisal got himself a lucrative deal and fell in line. Those who haven t - well, you know what s happened to them.
But Baig says PPP workers and senior leaders are very unhappy with the party s politics and several recent decisions have caused divisions. The internal rift over the question of how to govern Karachi is so bad that party MPAs decided to vote against the ordinance to restore the 2001 local government system if it were tabled in the Sindh Assembly. Law Minister Maula Bux Chandio even called his predecessor Babar Awan a viceroy trying to dictate policies to Sindh.
There is bound to be chaos if your advisors are people like Rehman Malik and Babar Awan, Baig adds. These guys don t understand people s needs. They are just massage-wallahs, rubbing down the boss s anxieties, saying what he wants to hear. They have failed as advisors.
Baig, whose role in the PPP had centred on managing diplomatic affairs, says one of the areas in which the PPP has fared most poorly is foreign policy. Since 2008, I ve never heard of a serious foreign policy discussion within the party ranks, Baig says. They ve left foreign policy to the Pindi boys. When US politicians come they go directly to meet General Kayani.
Baig goes silent when the conversation turns to Karachi. The recent wave of violence takes him back to 1995 when MQM activists attacked his son-in-law s car in the Clifton area. His daughter and son-in-law received multiple bullet wounds but survived. My barely two year old grandson didn t make it, Baig says. That s when I moved to Islamabad with my whole family.
But things have gone from bad to worse since, Baig says resignedly. The only way out: a crackdown on corruption. And this means respecting Supreme Court decisions, he says. You know the story: during the dark hours of the Battle of Britain, Churchill only asked his cabinet one question, Are the courts working? On being told they were, he responded, Good, then Britain is safe .
Baig smiles. There is hope here too. Because the court s are functioning. And the PPP needs to let them keep doing that.
What do Enver Baig and Zulfiqar Mirza have in common? That the month of August has found both at the receiving end of President Asif Ali Zardari s wrath.
You can t break the ties that bind, sang Bruce Springsteen, and very likely Enver Baig was listening. The close aide of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and a retired senator is almost as well known for his vast collection of flamboyant neckties as he is for playing a significant role in the finalisation of the deal with the United States that eventually lead to Benazir s return from exile in 2007.
But Baig s cheerful, convention-breaking ties have cost him the ire of one man: President Zardari. Soon after Benazir s death, Zardari, the newly self-appointed co-chairman of the Pakistan People s Party, called a routine meeting. The political secretary of the president phoned Baig to invite him. But don t wear a colourful tie, she warned. The boss doesn t like it.
At another party meeting where Baig showed up in a solid black shirt, the flushed secretary ran up to him and asked, Tumbaaznahiaatay? (why don t you listen?)
I ve never understood what to do with AZ, how to make him happy Baig says as he fixes his shiny lime necktie. I ve never understood why he doesn t like me. Maybe its because I ve always called a spade a spade; because I ve questioned my own ministers about corruption; maybe because I was too close to Mohtarma [Benazir Bhutto]. But somehow, AZ has never liked me. And that s that.
Politicians rarely admit mistakes, but Baig, looking back on the eventful decades of his political career, is willing to count his errors. Sporting a blue and white striped shirt and a knot of yellow, he cuts a relaxed, even cheerful figure, and twinges of bitterness creep into his voice only when questioned about his relationship with now estranged friend, Makhdoom Amin Fahim,
and the recent rupture with the PPP.
My career with the PPP began with my friendship with Fahim and ended with his desertion, Baig told The News.
Baig s affiliation with the PPP is indeed as old as his friendship with Fahim whom he met at a car showroom in Dubai in 1971. But the heartlessness of power came in the way of friendship in February 2008 when Baig faced being eliminated from the national political scene if he chose friendship over politics. He did.
The PPP at the time was divided between two camps: those who backed Zardari in supporting Yusuf Raza Gilani for prime minister and a few from the old guard who were cheering for Fahim. Very soon even Fahim s closest friends, realising there were no permanent bedfellows in politics, quietly left his side.
Asked to name his biggest political blunder, Baig replies without hesitation: That instead of joining the Zardari camp after Mohtarma s death, I stayed with Fahim. He was a forty-year-old friend, our wives and kids were best friends. If I had left him, how would I have faced my children?
But some PPP insiders say it wasn t just friendship that kept Baig on Fahim s side. Fahim got him a party ticket for the Senate in 2003, and Baig hoped he would do the same in 2009; Zardari would be much harder to convince, a senior PPP leader told The News.
Late one night in February 2008, a trusted aide of Zardari - party insiders say it was Faisal Butt who would one year later in February 2009 be denied a PPP senate ticket himself - approached Baig with a prepared press statement containing damaging remarks against Fahim. He asked Baig to sign the statement. Baig refused. I didn t realize then that Fahim would abandon me one month later, he says.
Those close to Fahim say it was Fahim s wife who finally intervened between Fahim and Zardari and helped patch things up. A close friend of the family says she subsequently called up Baig to apologise: Enver bhai, we have to run our kitchen.
So while Fahim survived as a political player, Zardari turned his wrath on Baig by not awarding him a ticket for the Senate in 2009. This ostracisation reached its logical conclusion on August 4, 2011, when Baig s basic membership of the PPP was suspended for working against party interest and police. Baig has refused to appeal the suspension.
I find it below my dignity to respond to this letter written by some nobody [Syed Nayyer Hussain Bokhari, President PPP Islamabad]. It should have come from the secretary general, Baig says. And the proper procedure is to issue a show-cause notice and then follow that up with suspension if the response in unsatisfactory. This was like saying, You ve committed murdered; here s your death sentence. The question is, who has been murdered; where s the trial?
Interestingly, the suspension letter came one day after Baig held a meeting with PML-N President Nawaz Sharif. PPP insiders say Baig is expected to join the PML-N soon and has been dealt a pre-emptive strike by the PPP. He had already caused a stir by holding a dramatic meeting with Nawaz in March 2009, without the knowledge or approval of the party leadership, and hardly a day after PPP and PML-N members nearly got into a fistfight in the National Assembly, said a PPP insider. Long ago, Baig lost the ability to balance his independence with his loyalty to the party, and it was no wonder that the higher leadership stopped trusting him.
Former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has also been censured by the party for meeting Nawaz recently but the PPP Punjab s resolution that he be sacked was not okayed by the high command. Qureshi is still valued. He s a big player in Multan, arguably the biggest. The party can t afford to have him fighting against them at a time its already scrambling for support, said a PPP insider. Enver? He s irrelevant. He owes all his political achievements to one person: Mohtarma. And what he forgot was that after Mohtarma he continued to have a constituency of one: the party chief. If he wanted to stick around without a constituency, then at least please the boss. It s simple enough. And look, he s now running after Nawaz.
Baig is noncommittal when asked whether he will join Nawaz now. He says he is speaking to everyone, including the MQM, PTI and smaller parties,. But you go where there is a chance of the party coming to power in the future, Baig admits.
But why would Baig want to join hands with someone so ideologically different? Look, Nawaz signed the Charter of Democracy with Mohtarma, he says. They were determined to do it collectively.
But why hasn t Nawaz been able to work with Zardari?
People who Mohtarma nominated as her murderers even before she died; those who have said, The PPP s motto is Bhutto and lutto (rob) -they are now in the government with the PPP. Faisal Saleh Hayat went to the Supreme Court with corruption charges against Raja Pervez Ashraf, and now sits next to him. Who can work with theses guys? Baig says. We stuck around and faced Musharraf s rule while all these Johnnies defected and held cabinet positions. Now, they re back in the PPP cabinet. Faisal got himself a lucrative deal and fell in line. Those who haven t - well, you know what s happened to them.
But Baig says PPP workers and senior leaders are very unhappy with the party s politics and several recent decisions have caused divisions. The internal rift over the question of how to govern Karachi is so bad that party MPAs decided to vote against the ordinance to restore the 2001 local government system if it were tabled in the Sindh Assembly. Law Minister Maula Bux Chandio even called his predecessor Babar Awan a viceroy trying to dictate policies to Sindh.
There is bound to be chaos if your advisors are people like Rehman Malik and Babar Awan, Baig adds. These guys don t understand people s needs. They are just massage-wallahs, rubbing down the boss s anxieties, saying what he wants to hear. They have failed as advisors.
Baig, whose role in the PPP had centred on managing diplomatic affairs, says one of the areas in which the PPP has fared most poorly is foreign policy. Since 2008, I ve never heard of a serious foreign policy discussion within the party ranks, Baig says. They ve left foreign policy to the Pindi boys. When US politicians come they go directly to meet General Kayani.
Baig goes silent when the conversation turns to Karachi. The recent wave of violence takes him back to 1995 when MQM activists attacked his son-in-law s car in the Clifton area. His daughter and son-in-law received multiple bullet wounds but survived. My barely two year old grandson didn t make it, Baig says. That s when I moved to Islamabad with my whole family.
But things have gone from bad to worse since, Baig says resignedly. The only way out: a crackdown on corruption. And this means respecting Supreme Court decisions, he says. You know the story: during the dark hours of the Battle of Britain, Churchill only asked his cabinet one question, Are the courts working? On being told they were, he responded, Good, then Britain is safe .
Baig smiles. There is hope here too. Because the court s are functioning. And the PPP needs to let them keep doing that.
