JJ’s BB

Javed Jabbar’s (JJ) latest book, But, Prime Minister…, published by Paramount Books, is an honest tribute to the first elected woman prime minister of the Muslim world, Benazir Bhutto (BB). He admires when it is due, wonders as a human and uses buts without ifs when the conscience so demands. His experience in communication business, command over the Queen’s English and the debating skills developed since the student days serve him well. But there is also the baggage of entry into the Senate through non-party elections engineered by an obscurantist military dictator. This is the same elections that BB later regretted to have left the field open to opportunists. JJ claims he was invariably on the side of independents. Special pleading, some might say.

He voted PPP in the 1970s but never joined it. The young in those heady days all felt being part of the PPP, without being the “four anna” members.

Before the reader asks whether the book is about JJ or BB, let me say it is about JJ’s BB seen through his interactions in 1986-2000. After becoming prime minister in 1988, BB invited JJ to join her cabinet as state minister for information, a portfolio matching his key competency. Thinking that he would be the lone senator representing the PPP in the upper house, he expected to be a full minister. BB disarmed him by saying that the portfolio will remain with her. This is not the only time when JJ saw the point of what BB was saying.

State media began to cover the opposition and the news staff was made free to exercise their judgement in the choice of content. A major indiscretion, translating the accusation of secularism against BB as atheism in reporting a speech by the main opposition leader, led to a reprimand by Nusrat Bhutto, not BB. This came later on PTV’s portrayal of police misbehaviour during the anti-Rushdie riots and before an NEC meeting. BB also avoided his prized AdAsia 89 moot in Lahore. JJ could be excused for starting the Q&A before BB’s opening statement at a press conference, but BB was at fault in not responding to guest Rajiv’s assertions on Kashmir out of politeness.

However, an emotional BB perturbed over personal diatribes by the opponents flashed through his mind when she stood defiant in the parliament. Politicians can be human, too, JJ.

She did well in the parliament, but could have done much better, had she gone through the mill. His exchange of greetings with the army chief walking in a ground adjacent to the PM House in Pindi, while walking with BB, attracted “a knowing, fleeting look of amusement” in her eyes. Asif Zardari is deemed an aberration from the first sight. A JJ who delinked from MNJ Advertising to avoid conflict of interest, who is uncomfortable with performing Umrah at public expense or staying at the expensive Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, is intrigued by AZ’s alleged role in disappearing original documents in a case in Lahore High Court, the reputation of Mr 10% and his manners: “as I shook hands with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Asif Zardari surveyed the moment with a notably skeptical expression”; inappropriate posture in the presence of Saudi royalty; and more. JJ smells corruption but has no direct evidence or personal experience of it. Still, he does not buy the story that BB was unaware of the corrupt practices. Corruption perceptions and disagreement on a balanced information policy led to his exit. It seems the practice of shuffling unwanted information ministers to science and technology has old roots.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 2^nd, 2021.

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