CAMBRIDGE, UK: I am writing about my experience of a speech by a well-known Pakistani politician, one that he delivered on April 25, at the University of Cambridge.
The speech by Mian Iftikhar Hussain, senior leader of the Awami National Party (ANP) and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’s information minister, was scheduled to begin at five pm. I must have forgotten the accepted norm of our country’s political leaders to be not just ‘fashionably late’ but ‘annoyingly late’. The speech started two and a half hours behind schedule, at seven-thirty pm. Given the size of the audience that waited, clearly many students and professors from Cambridge still thought it was worth the wait.
To my complete dismay, the minister not only arrived so late, he then went on to immediately say that there would be no speech and instead the floor would open for questions and answers. The well-mannered crowd nodded in silence till I had to raise my hand and ask why the speech, which was the very reason for all of us gathering there, was being so conveniently cancelled. That prompted the minister to actually deliver a speech!
Speaking in fluent Urdu, Mian Iftikhar Hussain started informing the audience on what he said was Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’s present status and his and his party’s efforts provide stability and a more secure future for the youth of his province. He took credit for having conducted ‘muzakirat’ or dialogue with the trouble-makers and claimed that it was all because of those ‘muzakirat’ that the government had achieved success. The audience was told of how politicians in the province had shown courage in the face of threats and even actual attacks by militants. The minister told the audience that by and large the province was peaceful and that it was only in some areas where the “business” of violence was taking place.
I raised my hand again and asked the minister what his government was doing to ensure that the children growing up in the province were educated on how to cope with the violence around them. I also asked whether anything was being done to counsel these children or their parents so that they (the children) could realise and understand that there was more to life than just death and destruction. Instead of directly answering my question, the minister chose to focus on telling the audience that the ANP could not, and should not, be blamed for the present situation.
The whole exercise of listening to the minister’s speech and asking him questions was quite disappointing.
Rafia Durrani
Published in The Express Tribune, April 30th, 2012.
