Thank the good Lord the learned counsel did not add that the PPP is a non-political entity.
ISLAMABAD: Wasim Sajjad, counsel for the federation, submitted before the Lahore High Court (LHC) that the president has no political role and that he will still give up his political office in compliance with the orders of the LHC. This submission from the government amounts to stating an absurdity that the sun will be rising from the west and setting in the east. It is like putting light and darkness in the same category. This shows that from now on, there will be no difference between telling lies and speaking the truth. This duplicitous submission eradicates distinctions between good and evil. If holding political office while remaining president of the country is illegal, why did the president hold dual positions for five years in the first place? Mr Sajjad, who has lately assumed the legendary role that Sharifuddin Pirzada once enjoyed, made a strange argument that the PPP is not a political party because, according to his infinite wisdom, it is a political association. Thank the good Lord the learned counsel did not add that the PPP is a non-political entity. This statement of the federation’s advocate shows the moral bankruptcy of the ruling regime, which has lost all vestiges of moral ground that is a minimum requirement to govern.
President Asif Ali Zardari will continue to enjoy a free ride on the skeleton of the impoverished nation as long as the oppostion remains divided. The real character of this regime was succinctly summed up by its erstwhile chief minister in Balochistan, Nawab Aslam Raisani, who once famously remarked that a degree is a degree, whether real or fake. If you extend this argument of Raisani, it will mean that an election is an election, whether it is fair or rigged.
Such a government sans morality and rule of law may survive for a while but the country governed by it will not get the chance to see a bright future.
BA Malik
Published in The Express Tribune, February 9th, 2013.
