Fawad leaks

What made Fawad Chaudhry come up with a charge-sheet against his own party is anybody’s guess

Fawad Chaudhry continues to grab headlines in the media. Even despite Covid-19 consuming most of the airtime in news bulletins, the federal minister for science and technology has been generating big news for quite some time — be it the Eid moon sighting, the locally-manufactured ventilators or the indigenous testing kits. And now Fawad’s recent interview with the American broadcaster has been the talk of the town. No revelation though, whatever the outspoken politician has said about his own party, the ruling PTI, does confirm what was hitherto dismissed as rumours.

In the 24-minute interview, Fawad talks of grouping within the party, bureaucratic encroachment on political space, depleting civilian supremacy and poor team selection as reasons behind the “failure of the PTI government” to serve the people in line with “Imran Khan’s vision”. He sees six months more for the government to put their act together or else …?

Fawad’s leaks created quite a stir in both mainstream and social media, and even caused a slugfest during a cabinet meeting where a loud and unmanageable minister, from Karachi, had reportedly to be taken out of the room by the PM when he indicated using his muscle power against a senior minister. Sounds like a house in disarray, a typical post-match huddle with losing members of a team turning on each other and trading barbs and blames.

What made Fawad come up with a charge-sheet against his own party is anybody’s guess. The federal minister may have been speaking out of frustration of not being among the core group of the party; he may have his eyes on the next elections; and he may well be toeing a hidden agenda, something that’s quite a regular feature of our parliamentary politics.

Fawad did not directly blame PM Imran Khan for what he counts as government’s failures, but his take on the government’s performance does falsify Khan’s political narrative that lays blame at the door of “status quo parties” for all what ails the country now.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 25^th, 2020.

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