I thought I would write an elegy for those unfortunate ones who lost their lives.......on October 18th, the day the Bibi of the East returned from her exile....but I couldn't decide to whom it should be addressed. The majority of the dead were supporters of the PPP....but surely, a lot of them had been paid to attend the rally. People who were just trying to earn their bread through creative endeavor. Splintered people with divided loyalties....and now bodies, too. Then there were the party members holding various posts.....senior members now that they are dead. Some curious onlookers even. Now distorted beyond recoginition.
It was the biggest rally that the city has seen for sometime. There have been 'million marchs' before, but they never made it to a hundred thousand. BB probably had half a million show up on the roads to greet her - mostly paid maybe - but still it was a great show of strength for a party that has managed to thoroughly discredit itself at every opportunity.
Marx said religion is the opiate of the masses. Milan Kundera thinks its hope.....atleast in 'The Joke'. From the look of things, in my country, both are true...and maybe a few others, too. Not hinting towards the pitiable evolutionary track that the mashra treads upon, just on how things stand.
Why else would people put so much stock in out-dated slogans. 'Roti, Kapra aur Makan' - (Food, Shelter and Clothing) still is the desired end for most of the country's population. As it was in the 70's when Bhutto ascended to the throne and played Caesar without a tiara and sometimes exuding Mao's aura.
Now his daughter is back...once again. And her return hsa already seen nearly 150 people dead and scores injured in two horrific bomb blasts that targeted her procession. The toll could have been much worse. In a blink shorter than a butterfly flapping wings, bloood flew all over. Bodies and bones and a lot more. They were dying. Benazir was rushed to her destination. Cars trampled over bodies. And for those brave ones who were still trying to savor their last breaths...take with them whatevery they could of life and freedom and free will.....it must have been a back-breaking sight...if there was a back...and if it had not been broken. For it was the leader who was to be preserved. They were foot-soldiers and they could lie in pools of drying blood....but when you're breathing your last, you see no difference between the pauper and king...as long as both are breathing. And in those last fleeting glances, they would have known. What they were trying to stand up for - if at all - was nothing but a charade. An attempt at political mileage. Not that BB has not had her own personal heartbreaks. She lost her father and two brothers in a manner that would breakdown even Margaret Thatcher. But she has stood on...but she has also enjoyed the perks of martyrdom. Bhutto continues to have a dominating legacy. Murtaza Bhutto still evokes nostalgic sigh....his death continues to be a mystery. And the forgotten Shahnawaz.....the dandy......is coffee-table for conspiracy hatchers. Yes, she has lost...but she has gained, too. In dollars and pounds and swiss bank accounts. But the special reconciliation ordinance has pardoned her.
But what about those poverty-stricken loyalists who believe in hollow promises of the prophets of politics. They come from urban slums, mostly. And now they are dead. Mere names. And numbers, too. Sadly, this isn't the last. Forutnately, the backlash has not been as severe as it was when it was MQM who were attacked. Or the Islamists. Then all hell would break lose and kids with sticks and guns would maraud the areas where the mob mentality could be prevailed.
So far, PPP has been circumspect. Will the anger abate? Some fear retaliatory attacks. BB apparently isn't as strongly entrenched to consider one or maybe it's teh absence of Zardari, her beau, Mr. 30 percent. He has already implicated the inteligence agencies. And that's mannah for television channels.
The coverage that the entire episode was disturbing. It might not look out-of-place in a Fox News re-run, but the media the world over lapped it up.
Geo News - Pakistan's leading news channel - was being cut live by Al-Jazeera, BBC, CNN, Sky News and probably Fox News, too. And the Geo anchor even got aired on all the foreign channels due to sharp switching. In his rather handsome clothes.
The day started with Pakistan's most highly paid political pundit, Dr Shahid Masood, Ph.D, giving minute-to-minute update of the going-ons inside the plane. First it was people swapping seats to get closer to the political nexus that was perched in teh first class compartment. Some party-members took up seats in teh first-class section. The captain refused to fly and the people had to be made to go back to their seats. Still, the plane had more people in the front half, and as the luggage had been kept out for security purposes, the plane wasn't balanced, and it caused further delay. And Dr. Masood droned on in his usual manner...but his voice did betray some excitement, as if he was witness to a nuclear conflict unravelling in a crystal maze.
Benazir's plan touched base after much delay and finally there was something to shout about. Her solitary tear made ticker-worthy news and channels clamored to claim that she was crying like a harlot confessing her sins...
Once out, she took position atop her bullet-proof compartment - a sign of courage or maybe foolhardiness in retrospect - but a decision that probably emanated envious grunts from GHQ even. The women has no fear....or shame, they would probably say.
It was all very slow. Four hours and only five kilometers travelled. The most exciting day for the political paparazzis was turning into a test-match. The topical joke, ofcourse, was that only a blast could give the whole occassion a Twenty20 twist. And it came....after much waiting ofcourse. And the news channels had a field day. Even a martyr. An unfortunate camera-man who was scheduled to be posted to London...which means opening up of horizons and dream come true for the struggling middle-class denizens. He wasn't as lucky as the news-channel.
There was a race on the death count. It spiralled from 23 to 36 to 58 to 85 and quickly crossed 100. Channel logo's became black and white.....Geo set the trend after the May 12 carnage and all teh rest had to follow.
There was also a death & injured counter. And the race was as stiff here as it was before. Every 2 minutes, there would be a decrease in the number of injured and increase in death.
There was even a burning fire....just like they had it on fox during yesterday's fire in California. Media was basking in the glory of public misery. Reporters were dissecting teh crime scene. Experts (read: Windbags) postulated theories. Beauracrats issued condemnations. Politicians said nothing......substantial.
The pieces had been picked. But the deaths remain. A number on the screen.
Jim Morrison sang about the end. And it rained napalm in Vietnam. But we are immune to such lessons.
Until the next blast, adieu!
Monday, October 22, 2007
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
The only woman who can make Musharraf take off his clothes
The world is an evil place and you have to adopt evil ways. Hence the title. You have to decieve in order to lead - or atleast that seems to be the mantra of our leaders.
To ensure continuity of the status quo, our leaders time and again embroil themselves in certain national conflicts that absorb all energy and leaving the feeling in the air that the rest of the work needs to be left for another time.
That's how we have been led....by the noose. Just to flashback, not even in the distant far, a mere 5 years, even, and soo much has happen that our brains are over-taxed by conflicting information of conflicts.
Right now it's Benazir's return. Before that it was the crackdown against lawyers and the countrywide breakdown. Before that it was May 12th when Karachi easily reflected what life would be like in war-torn Beirut at the height of the crisis. Before that was the continuing saga of Lal Masjid and the Chief Justice. Somewhere in the middle was Nawaz Sharif's aborted attempts of return and Shoaib Akhtar's shenanigans.
Before that was continuous detention of political prisoners. Before that was the political assassination of a politcal figure and a tribal leader of great standing even if cruel ways - Nawab Akbar Bukti...Before that and continuing todate is the ongoing saga of militants in FATA region, especially Waziristan..
And God unleashed some divine wrath in the middle, too. The October Eight earthquake in the already war-torn Kashmir region destabilized lives even further. Safe estimates suggest that it killed a million and made another 3 million homeless.
And the rest have now become more dependent on official aid, political concessions and moments of army benevolence. Cynics suggest it will expedite the process of recruiting foot-soldiers.
But that's how it's been. The political climate has been simmering for a while now. Benazir's imminent return means that Karachi will be a cauldron of activity. 80,000 members are expected to welcome BB
From the alliance of political parties supporting PPP, only one party has stepped forward to join the ranks of PPP foot-soldiers in welcoming home their patron saint. Funnily enough, I had never expected such a party to exist. It's the 'All Pakistan's Minority Alliance' and is led by one Prince Rashid. So this party is an alliance of minorities, who number around 5% of the total population in generous official estimates that probably want to cover up a healthcare genocide of Aremenian-Turkish levels. This means that the alliance of minorities is the only party with the cajonies to welcome BB...or an urgence for a voice in the political apparatus, to expose themselves so much in such a volatile environment. It could generally be said that 'they have nothing to lose', but in Pakistan you always have your life...
While the party members are expected to descend in full force in Karachi by tonight, the city already is painted in PPP colours. Cross-roads are brimming with billboards with shots of Benazir with an inviting smile and Zulfi bathed in rhetorical exuberance.
And streets and avenues are lined up with hoardings and boardings. Ethnic supporters have set up camps at different junctions....setting up free-style dance fun to the tune of traditional PPP songs....they are catchy, too, if you have listened to them since childhood.
Though they are expected to become a nuisance. Cause blockades and jams....attempting merry-making on important roads holding up traffic...Just to incite conflict and then press home the numbers advantage. That's the prevalent psyche of collective groups in my society. Like a bunch of swaggering adolescent newbies emerging out of the pub to confront fans of a rival football club.
Surprisingly, MQM, the street-thugs of Karachi and also the ruling party, have stayed quiet over the developments. A few complaints have been heard about the using of excessive hoardings as illegal...but otherwise, they say that will welcome the return of Benazir.
Musharraf, though in an interview to a private channel, suggested that BB should delay her return until the Supreme Court ruling on his uniform issue. But everyone has to look after his goat and so BB insists on returning as per schedule.
And with the permeance of media, and talk-shows and opinion-makers and opium-takers, a lot of politicians appeared on a lot of channels and said a lot of things. Sheikh Rasheed, minister emeritus of the political appartus, gets the vote for making the most attempts to not sound hackneyed.
Sher Afghan gets the nod for the most obtrusive.
Wasi Zaffar for being the most stupid.
Well, they are windbags, generally. They are asked one question.....and they meander on generalities until they come to the point where they hail their party leader - whether BB, Nawaz, or Mush - as the sole honest guardians worthy of executing the people's will and the preferred choice of the people.
So I was watching this tv show, and there was this windbag, Nafis Saddik or Siddiqi, from the PPP...who when asked various tricky questions about Benazir's volte-face decision to mend fendces with the army government and a direct comparison of her return and Nawaz's aborted attempt, the said minister, mr Nafis Sadik droned on upon length over the various methods through which the people of the country expressed its un-said desire of being governed by Benazir....but I will try to reproduce the beginning and the end of his defense of benazir.
Mr Minister on TV Channel: "Benazir is the only woman in the world today who can make Musharraf take off his uniform...........[and somewhere before the end where I zone out]....she is the only woman in Pakistan today who can sell the image of Pakistan to the West.."
I know we have to be candid and we don't have to trashy but sometimes on tv it just sounds wrong.
As wrong as the caller on the same show, a man of the army. He rebuked claims of the PPP minister that PPP members were victims of flogging when Zia imposed martial law after taking over power from Zulfi Bhutto in the 1977 coup. He claimed that he was the supervisor of Jails and there were only three reported cases of flogging and that were on the charges of 'Sodomy'.
Yes, 's-o-d-o-m-y.' The minister intially couldn't scuffle his giggle and the cheap producer of the show did manage to get some image but it was less than 2 second and appeared as a jump. [Jump refers to where video comes-and-goes off the screen real quick without allowing you the time to absorb the details of the image]
However, the panel of political experts discussed sodomy for a while and then they moved on to something irrelevant and I flipped the channel.
Apparently they have found a new dinosaur in Brazil. And it's also dead. But the fascination with the ugly creature continues with millions spent on research and billions on hollywood movies. Also, some money on reordering young people's prejudices against these monsters by presenting them as lovable pets in silly cartoons.
Also, not very far away from the birth-place of Ronaldo, or from the jungles of the Amazon, an aspiring writer murdered and ate his girlfriend. The man from Colombia was into animal-porn, sadomasochism and apparently obsessed with de Sade's '120 Years of Sodom'....but not in a similar way as the Army-man-caller-on-stupid-political-show.
Mr Juan also made one his ex-girlfriends sell copies of his porn novel on streets for pittance. A true conservative. He had stored his cut-up girlfriend's thigh in his fridge and was planning to send it to her family as a thanksgiving present.
The things that these freaks cook up. No better than the lot we have in Pakistan...where feudal lords, the local aristocracy as left behind the Britishers, wield absolute power in courts of laws that are of their own making. And the cases generally discussed in these courts are about honour and the general punishment is the public stripping and rape of the sister of the offending party or the obligatory murder of the man (and woman) who has dishonoured the family....with dishonour meaning everything from infidelity to the chance glance at a passerby which was construed as 'exuding desire or lust' ....all these provide enough reason to murder(or rape or strip or all three together or any two in a preferable combination) a woman(mostly).
The latest crime against woman in Pakistan is the murder of a lady teacher in a village in the NWFP - the stronghold of the religious parties and much-touted breeding ground of militant Islam.
Among other interesting stories, Fidel Castro has been out of power for over a year. Che Guevara has been dead for 39 years.....it was his anniversary a few days back.
Conflict and persecution of protestors continue in Myanmar. Iran maintains its beligerent stance in the face of global pressure. North Korea is finally getting things done the way it wanted and it is showing that America has learnt it's lesson in dealing with the Oriental race.
Maybe it's left to the Arabs and the Asian-Aryans to provide the sucker-punch to Uncle Sam that will start a new period of cultural imperialism...shifting the focus of North America to EuroAsia.....with production dominance emanating from China and the Korea's and Japan leading in technological effeciency. Australasia and the Pacific rim can also emerge as power brokers. And Papu New Guinea will become the next super-power.....in pinball.
Dream on.
To ensure continuity of the status quo, our leaders time and again embroil themselves in certain national conflicts that absorb all energy and leaving the feeling in the air that the rest of the work needs to be left for another time.
That's how we have been led....by the noose. Just to flashback, not even in the distant far, a mere 5 years, even, and soo much has happen that our brains are over-taxed by conflicting information of conflicts.
Right now it's Benazir's return. Before that it was the crackdown against lawyers and the countrywide breakdown. Before that it was May 12th when Karachi easily reflected what life would be like in war-torn Beirut at the height of the crisis. Before that was the continuing saga of Lal Masjid and the Chief Justice. Somewhere in the middle was Nawaz Sharif's aborted attempts of return and Shoaib Akhtar's shenanigans.
Before that was continuous detention of political prisoners. Before that was the political assassination of a politcal figure and a tribal leader of great standing even if cruel ways - Nawab Akbar Bukti...Before that and continuing todate is the ongoing saga of militants in FATA region, especially Waziristan..
And God unleashed some divine wrath in the middle, too. The October Eight earthquake in the already war-torn Kashmir region destabilized lives even further. Safe estimates suggest that it killed a million and made another 3 million homeless.
And the rest have now become more dependent on official aid, political concessions and moments of army benevolence. Cynics suggest it will expedite the process of recruiting foot-soldiers.
But that's how it's been. The political climate has been simmering for a while now. Benazir's imminent return means that Karachi will be a cauldron of activity. 80,000 members are expected to welcome BB
From the alliance of political parties supporting PPP, only one party has stepped forward to join the ranks of PPP foot-soldiers in welcoming home their patron saint. Funnily enough, I had never expected such a party to exist. It's the 'All Pakistan's Minority Alliance' and is led by one Prince Rashid. So this party is an alliance of minorities, who number around 5% of the total population in generous official estimates that probably want to cover up a healthcare genocide of Aremenian-Turkish levels. This means that the alliance of minorities is the only party with the cajonies to welcome BB...or an urgence for a voice in the political apparatus, to expose themselves so much in such a volatile environment. It could generally be said that 'they have nothing to lose', but in Pakistan you always have your life...
While the party members are expected to descend in full force in Karachi by tonight, the city already is painted in PPP colours. Cross-roads are brimming with billboards with shots of Benazir with an inviting smile and Zulfi bathed in rhetorical exuberance.
And streets and avenues are lined up with hoardings and boardings. Ethnic supporters have set up camps at different junctions....setting up free-style dance fun to the tune of traditional PPP songs....they are catchy, too, if you have listened to them since childhood.
Though they are expected to become a nuisance. Cause blockades and jams....attempting merry-making on important roads holding up traffic...Just to incite conflict and then press home the numbers advantage. That's the prevalent psyche of collective groups in my society. Like a bunch of swaggering adolescent newbies emerging out of the pub to confront fans of a rival football club.
Surprisingly, MQM, the street-thugs of Karachi and also the ruling party, have stayed quiet over the developments. A few complaints have been heard about the using of excessive hoardings as illegal...but otherwise, they say that will welcome the return of Benazir.
Musharraf, though in an interview to a private channel, suggested that BB should delay her return until the Supreme Court ruling on his uniform issue. But everyone has to look after his goat and so BB insists on returning as per schedule.
And with the permeance of media, and talk-shows and opinion-makers and opium-takers, a lot of politicians appeared on a lot of channels and said a lot of things. Sheikh Rasheed, minister emeritus of the political appartus, gets the vote for making the most attempts to not sound hackneyed.
Sher Afghan gets the nod for the most obtrusive.
Wasi Zaffar for being the most stupid.
Well, they are windbags, generally. They are asked one question.....and they meander on generalities until they come to the point where they hail their party leader - whether BB, Nawaz, or Mush - as the sole honest guardians worthy of executing the people's will and the preferred choice of the people.
So I was watching this tv show, and there was this windbag, Nafis Saddik or Siddiqi, from the PPP...who when asked various tricky questions about Benazir's volte-face decision to mend fendces with the army government and a direct comparison of her return and Nawaz's aborted attempt, the said minister, mr Nafis Sadik droned on upon length over the various methods through which the people of the country expressed its un-said desire of being governed by Benazir....but I will try to reproduce the beginning and the end of his defense of benazir.
Mr Minister on TV Channel: "Benazir is the only woman in the world today who can make Musharraf take off his uniform...........[and somewhere before the end where I zone out]....she is the only woman in Pakistan today who can sell the image of Pakistan to the West.."
I know we have to be candid and we don't have to trashy but sometimes on tv it just sounds wrong.
As wrong as the caller on the same show, a man of the army. He rebuked claims of the PPP minister that PPP members were victims of flogging when Zia imposed martial law after taking over power from Zulfi Bhutto in the 1977 coup. He claimed that he was the supervisor of Jails and there were only three reported cases of flogging and that were on the charges of 'Sodomy'.
Yes, 's-o-d-o-m-y.' The minister intially couldn't scuffle his giggle and the cheap producer of the show did manage to get some image but it was less than 2 second and appeared as a jump. [Jump refers to where video comes-and-goes off the screen real quick without allowing you the time to absorb the details of the image]
However, the panel of political experts discussed sodomy for a while and then they moved on to something irrelevant and I flipped the channel.
Apparently they have found a new dinosaur in Brazil. And it's also dead. But the fascination with the ugly creature continues with millions spent on research and billions on hollywood movies. Also, some money on reordering young people's prejudices against these monsters by presenting them as lovable pets in silly cartoons.
Also, not very far away from the birth-place of Ronaldo, or from the jungles of the Amazon, an aspiring writer murdered and ate his girlfriend. The man from Colombia was into animal-porn, sadomasochism and apparently obsessed with de Sade's '120 Years of Sodom'....but not in a similar way as the Army-man-caller-on-stupid-political-show.
Mr Juan also made one his ex-girlfriends sell copies of his porn novel on streets for pittance. A true conservative. He had stored his cut-up girlfriend's thigh in his fridge and was planning to send it to her family as a thanksgiving present.
The things that these freaks cook up. No better than the lot we have in Pakistan...where feudal lords, the local aristocracy as left behind the Britishers, wield absolute power in courts of laws that are of their own making. And the cases generally discussed in these courts are about honour and the general punishment is the public stripping and rape of the sister of the offending party or the obligatory murder of the man (and woman) who has dishonoured the family....with dishonour meaning everything from infidelity to the chance glance at a passerby which was construed as 'exuding desire or lust' ....all these provide enough reason to murder(or rape or strip or all three together or any two in a preferable combination) a woman(mostly).
The latest crime against woman in Pakistan is the murder of a lady teacher in a village in the NWFP - the stronghold of the religious parties and much-touted breeding ground of militant Islam.
Among other interesting stories, Fidel Castro has been out of power for over a year. Che Guevara has been dead for 39 years.....it was his anniversary a few days back.
Conflict and persecution of protestors continue in Myanmar. Iran maintains its beligerent stance in the face of global pressure. North Korea is finally getting things done the way it wanted and it is showing that America has learnt it's lesson in dealing with the Oriental race.
Maybe it's left to the Arabs and the Asian-Aryans to provide the sucker-punch to Uncle Sam that will start a new period of cultural imperialism...shifting the focus of North America to EuroAsia.....with production dominance emanating from China and the Korea's and Japan leading in technological effeciency. Australasia and the Pacific rim can also emerge as power brokers. And Papu New Guinea will become the next super-power.....in pinball.
Dream on.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Unofficial victory - Official celebrations
All the king's men got together at the PML-Q house in Islamabad to celebrate Mush's snowballing off his opponents in the presidential election. The PPP candidate didn't get a single vote...as the political party's representatives in the assemblies boycotted the election. Why humble your candidate then, is the question, which won't be asked. The retired judge, Wajihuddin, got around 8 votes. Mush got more than 650.
He got congratulated by Altaf Hussain of MQM fame even...who pledged - yet again - his support to the General in fighting all the evils that he is as much responsible as your father for your birth.
But it's a funny old thing - our politics. On the eve of the elections, a special Reconciliation Ordinance was promulgated that provided Amnesty to all parlimentarians for all the looting they did between 1988 and 1999 - those intermittent spurts of democracy in which Benazir and Nawaz took turns in playing hustler for the country's cherry-pie.
So now, once the time for general elections come, a level playing field will be provided to the politicians in exile - Benazir and Nawaz and maybe as a Eid gift they will let Altaf return too but he wouldn't want it - so that a truly democratic setup comes into existance.
I am all good with executive powers but who gives the ruler to grant amnesty to politicians en masse. I have nothing against clemency either that american presidents exercise in sappy movies and dramatic shows, but what the fuck? You can't clean the slate without raising the question for debate.
Political expediency is the principle that turns the wheel. That's why Salman Rushdie wrote Shame.
He got congratulated by Altaf Hussain of MQM fame even...who pledged - yet again - his support to the General in fighting all the evils that he is as much responsible as your father for your birth.
But it's a funny old thing - our politics. On the eve of the elections, a special Reconciliation Ordinance was promulgated that provided Amnesty to all parlimentarians for all the looting they did between 1988 and 1999 - those intermittent spurts of democracy in which Benazir and Nawaz took turns in playing hustler for the country's cherry-pie.
So now, once the time for general elections come, a level playing field will be provided to the politicians in exile - Benazir and Nawaz and maybe as a Eid gift they will let Altaf return too but he wouldn't want it - so that a truly democratic setup comes into existance.
I am all good with executive powers but who gives the ruler to grant amnesty to politicians en masse. I have nothing against clemency either that american presidents exercise in sappy movies and dramatic shows, but what the fuck? You can't clean the slate without raising the question for debate.
Political expediency is the principle that turns the wheel. That's why Salman Rushdie wrote Shame.
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Tid bits continue.
Tomorrow, or rather Today, is the Presidential Election....President General Pervez Musharraf seeks another mandate of five years.
The ruckus is about whether Mush can ask the 'outgoing' assembly to provide him the mandate for the next five years. That's what half the legal battle is about and the other half is about whether he can demand the outgoing assembly to give him the mandate 'with' the uniform. Whatever happens, it will be out in the open by the end of tomorrow, when the peoples' representatives go to the ballot box and cast their votes, the result of which - many commentators claim - is a foregone conclusion.
Just like the Supreme court verdict for the President Mush. Apparently, of the nine judges, six were Mush honchos. Hence, the six-three verdict. Which basically means, if you are corrupt, you're with Musharraf. Now I don't agree with such claims, but it has been gaining currency of late.
Benazir and her antics continue to defy the head. One moment she cries foul and claims talks between government and her party have completely stalled and the next there are rumour doing the round that she is all set to replace Shaukat Aziz as Musharraf's next PM.
The APDM - All Parties Democratic Conference - promises to put up a bold front but apparently, Mush has done enough tweaking and horse-trading to ensure that the assemblies will give him the mandate.
The MMA - the coalition of the Islamist parties - have taken everyone for a ride with their incessant promises....about resigning from the assemblies...but somehow or the other, they have made sure that they give in their resignation without letting it effect the presidential election - which incidentally was the 'generally accepted' purpose of the resignation. Funny things continue to happen.
Just like MQM filed a suit against Imran Khan for standing in elections because of his 'immoral relationship' with Sita White. A paternity suit was filed against Imran long time back, when he was first making forays into politics. It was disposed off. But MQM insisted but thankgod the election commission has more sense than Altaf and his henchmen.
The suit was filed in response to Imran Khan filing a suit against Altaf Hussain in England. And there's an online petition, too, if anyone is willing to risk it..
But back to the hackneyed. Pakistan lost the first test to South Africa after another inept display with the bat. God knows when will our administration and players learn. 20-20 joys are short-lived....and the nation is known for its amnesia. Thank god five-day tests are too much for their attention span or else Shoaib Malik's effigies would be in the street, turning into cinders next to George Bush.
So yes, we prepare for elections. And all else takes back-seat. The corruption cases, honour killings, abduction of innocents, incidents of security-agency highhandedness, contempt of court, murder on the street, teenagers raped and feudal flings has been forgotten as all the minds in the country are taxing themselves over the legal wranglings that everyone is apparently getting into it.
The Politicians are trying to get the best deal. The Army is ensuring that all the other forces are enforcing tight security and that their positions of power are not compromised - with or without Mush. The other security agencies are enforcing tight security. The Moulvis are making sure they deliver the sermon and tell the faithfuls about the virtues of voting for Moulvis. But the General elections have another month to go, or so the date says, and the Mouvis have enough time.
There was this Great debate on Geo - where there ar two sides 'Geo Musharraf' (literally 'LIVE MUSHARRAF' or otherwise 'WELL-BOWL MUSHY' - if you remember Moin khan..) and 'JEENAY DO MUSHARRAF' (Let Live Musharraf..) and the two sides were represented by the Government and Opposition ministers. Sheikh Rasheed was the funniest. Dr Salman Shah was a sloppy and tried to play the numbers game but Shaukat Tareen and company had done their job and ripped them apart.
I am going to sleep now. All this is pointless anyway. Need to get down to the basics. Stories that don't have faces. That's what we should concentrate upon. And not just faces. What a media!
The ruckus is about whether Mush can ask the 'outgoing' assembly to provide him the mandate for the next five years. That's what half the legal battle is about and the other half is about whether he can demand the outgoing assembly to give him the mandate 'with' the uniform. Whatever happens, it will be out in the open by the end of tomorrow, when the peoples' representatives go to the ballot box and cast their votes, the result of which - many commentators claim - is a foregone conclusion.
Just like the Supreme court verdict for the President Mush. Apparently, of the nine judges, six were Mush honchos. Hence, the six-three verdict. Which basically means, if you are corrupt, you're with Musharraf. Now I don't agree with such claims, but it has been gaining currency of late.
Benazir and her antics continue to defy the head. One moment she cries foul and claims talks between government and her party have completely stalled and the next there are rumour doing the round that she is all set to replace Shaukat Aziz as Musharraf's next PM.
The APDM - All Parties Democratic Conference - promises to put up a bold front but apparently, Mush has done enough tweaking and horse-trading to ensure that the assemblies will give him the mandate.
The MMA - the coalition of the Islamist parties - have taken everyone for a ride with their incessant promises....about resigning from the assemblies...but somehow or the other, they have made sure that they give in their resignation without letting it effect the presidential election - which incidentally was the 'generally accepted' purpose of the resignation. Funny things continue to happen.
Just like MQM filed a suit against Imran Khan for standing in elections because of his 'immoral relationship' with Sita White. A paternity suit was filed against Imran long time back, when he was first making forays into politics. It was disposed off. But MQM insisted but thankgod the election commission has more sense than Altaf and his henchmen.
The suit was filed in response to Imran Khan filing a suit against Altaf Hussain in England. And there's an online petition, too, if anyone is willing to risk it..
But back to the hackneyed. Pakistan lost the first test to South Africa after another inept display with the bat. God knows when will our administration and players learn. 20-20 joys are short-lived....and the nation is known for its amnesia. Thank god five-day tests are too much for their attention span or else Shoaib Malik's effigies would be in the street, turning into cinders next to George Bush.
So yes, we prepare for elections. And all else takes back-seat. The corruption cases, honour killings, abduction of innocents, incidents of security-agency highhandedness, contempt of court, murder on the street, teenagers raped and feudal flings has been forgotten as all the minds in the country are taxing themselves over the legal wranglings that everyone is apparently getting into it.
The Politicians are trying to get the best deal. The Army is ensuring that all the other forces are enforcing tight security and that their positions of power are not compromised - with or without Mush. The other security agencies are enforcing tight security. The Moulvis are making sure they deliver the sermon and tell the faithfuls about the virtues of voting for Moulvis. But the General elections have another month to go, or so the date says, and the Mouvis have enough time.
There was this Great debate on Geo - where there ar two sides 'Geo Musharraf' (literally 'LIVE MUSHARRAF' or otherwise 'WELL-BOWL MUSHY' - if you remember Moin khan..) and 'JEENAY DO MUSHARRAF' (Let Live Musharraf..) and the two sides were represented by the Government and Opposition ministers. Sheikh Rasheed was the funniest. Dr Salman Shah was a sloppy and tried to play the numbers game but Shaukat Tareen and company had done their job and ripped them apart.
I am going to sleep now. All this is pointless anyway. Need to get down to the basics. Stories that don't have faces. That's what we should concentrate upon. And not just faces. What a media!
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