Skewed priorities

Priori­ties in this Islamic Republic tend to be wonky. There is little concept of what should be first and last.

Priorities in this Islamic Republic tend to be wonky, from top to bottom, from presidency to hovel. There is little concept of what should or should not come first and last.

That the government saw fit to shut down a country up to its neck in debt, crumbling into bankruptcy, for four days to celebrate a festival makes little sense to anyone and certainly not to Pakistan’s creditors and to those to whom the ubiquitous begging bowl is forever extended.

An email from a puzzled friend in the US referred to two news items in the press of September 2 – “one a righteous protest that the Americans asked a Pakistani military delegation to disembark a US carrier flying to Florida – real indignation that one. But there was no indignation about the other, the slaughter of innocent people in Lahore because they happened to be members of a minority sect. How is the west to determine the sense of ethical values when one news item gets Pakistani pride aroused and the other reveals the deep schism within your own country? Help us understand the minds of Pakistani Muslims when acts of violence are against fellow Pakistani Muslims.”

Also during the month of abstinence, we had a few puzzled locals who remarked on the unseemly advertising practices of the media. On three occasions, during the flood-stricken blighted month of Ramazan, on the front-page of certain press publications were quarter-page advertisements by a Karachi hotel exhorting people to flock to one of their restaurants and “eat as much as you can” for Rs999. They appeared alongside harrowing reports of the sufferings and deprivations of flood victims, neck-deep in polluted water, seeking food and solace.

As thoughtless are the utterances of various ministers, particularly that of the prime variety, who seem incapable of sorting out sense from nonsense. They would all do better to remain silent — their role in the pathetic plight of the beloved awam is awesome. They have robbed, they have plundered, they have purposefully kept the peasantry in a state of misery and they will go on doing so for as long as they are given a free run in this land. As said one man who runs relief camps all over the country, if these feudal politicians do not wish to give anything to the people the very least they can do is not take from them. But that is too much to expect.

One other matter of national disgrace that has hit the western media is the planned construction of a monument to honour Benazir — not that she is unworthy of remembrance, she is and will be remembered by millions. She has no need of a monument on which the nation’s money will be spent and she would be appalled to know that at a time such as this, opportunities are being afforded to many who will be involved in its design and construction to add to their already overstuffed pockets at the expense of the few tax-payers of Pakistan.

If Benazir’s husband must have a monument by which to remember her, let him pay for it out of the billion or so dollars he has allegedly amassed over the years of his disservice to Pakistan. Reportedly his donation to the flood relief has been – and let’s talk dollars now – $58,000 which is half the amount donated by Angelina Jolie. None of us have doubts that he could easily afford its estimated cost of $10.6 million ($4.7 million for the monument to be built on land worth $5.9 million).

Note: The World Bank has it that Pakistan’s average annual per capita income is $870.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 18^th, 2010.