Speaking of the PIA, almost every government abused state-owned enterprises to provide jobs for unqualified cronies
LAHORE: This is apropos reports about Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari’s emotional outburst on the significance of a “mother’s jewels” referring to the fate of PIA on the solemn occasion of Benazir Bhutto’s death anniversary. I wonder if anybody abuses a “mother’s jewels”, the way they were plundered and abused from 2008 to 2013. If only the federal government headed by Asif Ali Zardari had handled the so-called jewels in a manner befitting them. It has been Pakistan’s tragedy that ever since the unfortunate death of the Quaid-e-Azam, almost every government, with a few exceptions, has abused state-owned enterprises as spoils of war or as organisations to provide jobs for unqualified cronies.
Coming from a party that never tires of claiming to be the champion and protector of the poor, yet offers to pay the lowest price for sugar cane harvest to poor farmers, this phrase is a an indictment. Had the PPP put half the amount of energy in bringing Bilawal’s mother’s murderers to justice — comparable with their consistent efforts to rescue Dr Asim Hussain — they would have retained their credibility and even their constituency in Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. It is time the PPP either reverted in letter and in spirit to the ideology and policies of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto or slowly but steadily lost political space and significance. PIA was resurrected from ruins by ZAB when he appointed men like Nur Khan to head it and gave them a free hand with no political interference or involvement in running the airline.
Malik Tariq Ali
Published in The Express Tribune, January 3rd, 2016.
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