The art of cynical distraction
I refuse to believe that the MQM will disappear altogether, just as PPP and JI will not disappear in the near future
anwer.mooraj@tribune.com.pk
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has a way of slipping away from troubles at home to host or attend useless seminars or conferences that achieve nothing. Like Saarc. Foreign delegates use this opportunity to slip away from troubles at home and sample new cuisine. The conferences are invariably inundated with cliche encrusted dross.
The deliberate absence of India from a Saarc meeting made it meaningless. I know one of our chaps said it doesn’t matter. Well it does matter. For unless India and Pakistan resolve their differences, all South Asian regional conferences are a sheer waste of time. They are like watching The Merchant of Venice without the Merchant. I’m sorry if Sartaj Aziz doesn’t like what I have just written, but ever since Zarrar Khuhro described me as a left-wing existentialist fascist who speaks his mind without fear or favour I feel I have a right to explode the bloated egos of people who waste the country’s money.
Recently there have been two images that have been flashed on television and printed in the newspapers that have stuck in my mind. The first is of Nawaz Sharif with the Chinese, the only real friends that Pakistan have. The hue of the fur on the cranium of Pakistan’s premier after his experiments with facial topiary differ from newspaper to newspaper. The second is of the man who gave the order for the flattening of MQM offices who possessed the perfect pair of handlebars that would have been the envy of both the British sergeant major in the Twelfth Bengal Rifles in Barrackpore of 1927, as well as the Sikh maharajas with their armies of waving prairies of whiskered warriors.
Switching to the MQM, which has found itself in an awful pickle, has seen in spite of the PTI, Waseem Akhtar of the MQM still managing to get elected mayor of Karachi whilst in jail. It was a remarkable victory considering what is happening to a party that once held Pakistan’s largest city in a vice. It was awfully decent of the authorities to permit Akhtar to step outside to allow the KMC chief to do the honours. How on earth people expect an incarcerated mayor to function beats me. Perhaps John Kerry might know. He has an answer for most things. The heads of two MQM factions have already cut the umbilical cord with the founder of the party who recently gave the thumbs down signal to the Pakistan flag. Whatever might be his ultimate fate, some people still remember the time during Ayub Khan’s reign when the dictator’s son Gohar brought marauding armed thugs from the north who clashed with the Mohajirs in Karachi, and a pharmacy student by the name of Altaf Husain started a political youth movement, which developed into a full-fledged political party.
Others still remember that time during Nawaz Sharif’s first bite at the national cherry when a million people turned up in a huge square in Liaquatabad to hear the chief minister of Sindh, Jam Sadiq Ali, Altaf Hussain and Nawaz Sharif who took turns to address the crowd. The PM in his characteristic flamboyant style said a huge amount had been allocated for Karachi, which, of course, he forgot all about when he got to Islamabad. However, the highlight of the evening occurred when the MQM chief said, “When I count to three I want complete silence.” And by golly… there was complete silence. No one coughed or scratched or fidgeted and even a couple of blokes, so I have been told, who sat on the balcony two rows behind the prime minister and wanted to pass wind exercised supreme control and twisted and turned and prayed the session would soon end. Well, that old power and charisma has evaporated. But I refuse to believe that the MQM will disappear altogether. Just as the PPP and the Jamaat-e-Islami will not disappear in the near future.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 4th, 2016.
The deliberate absence of India from a Saarc meeting made it meaningless. I know one of our chaps said it doesn’t matter. Well it does matter. For unless India and Pakistan resolve their differences, all South Asian regional conferences are a sheer waste of time. They are like watching The Merchant of Venice without the Merchant. I’m sorry if Sartaj Aziz doesn’t like what I have just written, but ever since Zarrar Khuhro described me as a left-wing existentialist fascist who speaks his mind without fear or favour I feel I have a right to explode the bloated egos of people who waste the country’s money.
Recently there have been two images that have been flashed on television and printed in the newspapers that have stuck in my mind. The first is of Nawaz Sharif with the Chinese, the only real friends that Pakistan have. The hue of the fur on the cranium of Pakistan’s premier after his experiments with facial topiary differ from newspaper to newspaper. The second is of the man who gave the order for the flattening of MQM offices who possessed the perfect pair of handlebars that would have been the envy of both the British sergeant major in the Twelfth Bengal Rifles in Barrackpore of 1927, as well as the Sikh maharajas with their armies of waving prairies of whiskered warriors.
Switching to the MQM, which has found itself in an awful pickle, has seen in spite of the PTI, Waseem Akhtar of the MQM still managing to get elected mayor of Karachi whilst in jail. It was a remarkable victory considering what is happening to a party that once held Pakistan’s largest city in a vice. It was awfully decent of the authorities to permit Akhtar to step outside to allow the KMC chief to do the honours. How on earth people expect an incarcerated mayor to function beats me. Perhaps John Kerry might know. He has an answer for most things. The heads of two MQM factions have already cut the umbilical cord with the founder of the party who recently gave the thumbs down signal to the Pakistan flag. Whatever might be his ultimate fate, some people still remember the time during Ayub Khan’s reign when the dictator’s son Gohar brought marauding armed thugs from the north who clashed with the Mohajirs in Karachi, and a pharmacy student by the name of Altaf Husain started a political youth movement, which developed into a full-fledged political party.
Others still remember that time during Nawaz Sharif’s first bite at the national cherry when a million people turned up in a huge square in Liaquatabad to hear the chief minister of Sindh, Jam Sadiq Ali, Altaf Hussain and Nawaz Sharif who took turns to address the crowd. The PM in his characteristic flamboyant style said a huge amount had been allocated for Karachi, which, of course, he forgot all about when he got to Islamabad. However, the highlight of the evening occurred when the MQM chief said, “When I count to three I want complete silence.” And by golly… there was complete silence. No one coughed or scratched or fidgeted and even a couple of blokes, so I have been told, who sat on the balcony two rows behind the prime minister and wanted to pass wind exercised supreme control and twisted and turned and prayed the session would soon end. Well, that old power and charisma has evaporated. But I refuse to believe that the MQM will disappear altogether. Just as the PPP and the Jamaat-e-Islami will not disappear in the near future.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 4th, 2016.