With the bloodletting in Karachi going on implacably, ten more men have been slain on Monday. This has prompted a heated debate in the Senate, where the ANP and MQM staged a walkout over the ruling party’s slumber. ANP’s members were loudly asking whether killing people was what was meant by democracy’s revenge. One Senator did not stop short of calling for an emergency for Sindh. This is only the frustration of the party as well as the countrymen in whose backdrop one can hear the sound of the jackboots stomping off to the metropolis. Dangerous eventualites lurk. Otherwise, the Senate would not be rocked with alarm bells of emergency or demand for army’s deployment in Quetta during Muharram. The PPP setup that holds power in the province has to assess the way it has dealt with lawlessness over the years. It is more than obvious that Karachi’s problem needs a thoroughly worked out plan, one that gives powers to the police and Rangers as well as the courts to act without the politicians telling them which criminal to catch and which to let go. It is no overstatement that events of the past, like the Pacca Qila killings, in fact fade into insignificance given the blood being spilled now. It is time for the authorities to brave the murderers and those pulling their strings lest it should give more reason to the Senators and the general public alike that the government exists but in name only.