KARACHI: The recent comments from senior journalist Talat Hussain about Raja Pervaiz Ashraf are shocking. It exposes the venom against the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) that some of our very respected names have been nurturing in their hearts.
The transfer of funds for the construction of an expressway, to the National Logistic Cell, which is a government agency operated by the Pakistan Army is called “naked corruption” by an honourable high court. The high court has objected on why the funds were not given to the Public Works Department (PWD) for inviting tenders and awarding the contract to a private contractor; one can perhaps call the act a bypassing of bureaucratic technicalities. But how can the award of a contract to an agency of the Pakistan Army and not to a private contractor through the PWD — where the going rate for awarding contracts is 40 per cent —be called “naked corruption” in this manner?
The PPP has withstood four decades of media trials. Such propaganda is nothing new for the party. But what really hurts is the “disappearing” part of Mr Hussain’s comment. Can he name a single PPP leader who has disappeared or run away? How can he ignore the years and years in jail that Raja Pervaiz Ashraf and others have spent on charges that could not be proved even in PCO courts? We, sir, have always stood up and fought on our stand. We have given our lives. We have never run away.
Not surprisingly, Mr Hussain is yet to find any fault with the acceptance of nomination papers of those IJI leaders who took funds from the ISI and rigged an election. This is only the tip of the iceberg, verified even by the Supreme Court.
How can a dictator, who dismissed and arrested judges, get his papers cleared in a scrutiny. On May 12, 2007, Mr Hussain was barricaded inside a media house. PPP leaders and workers were out on the roads and the dictator was boasting about the “people’s power”. Yet, Mr Hussain chooses to ignore the acceptance of his nomination papers by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP). What kind of joke is the ECP scrutiny if a candidate, rejected for not being sadiq and ameen in one constituency, is cleared in another?
On another note, I would like to thank The Express Tribune for a fair report on the economy in one of its recent issues. The report does not include our robust agriculture and wind energy projects that are our main economic breakthroughs, but even then, it answers so much of baseless propaganda. To borrow a phrase from Farooq Tirmizi, there certainly does exist, an “economically literate media”. We hope objective analyses like yours would contribute to its enlargement.
Taj Haider
General Secretary PPP, Sindh
Published in The Express Tribune, April 11th, 2013.
