PTI lawmaker’s strange, solo flight

I am rather keen to find out whether Imran Khan owns the demand of release of a killer in police uniform.

As a political party Imran Khan’s Tehrik-e-Insaaf is relatively new to parliamentary politics. Yet, on its 30-plus benches in the national assembly also sitting are people like Shah Mahmood Qureshi and Javed Hashmi. Both of them kept returning to elected houses since 1985. The bureaucrat-turned-politician, Shafqat Mahmood, had been a member of the upper house in the mid-1990s and a media-savvy teacher of international and strategic affairs, Dr Shireen Mazari, sits on benches reserved for the same party.

Such distinguished and experienced persons need no tutor to tell their comrades in the national assembly that while participating in general discussion on budgetary proposals, the PTI legislators must promote but clearly defined objectives and policies of a cohesive political outfit. You cannot play solo in this arena.

The PTI feels legitimately proud of sending many ‘new faces’ to elected houses. Mujahid Ali Khan happens to be one of them. He rather surprised many on May 11, 2013 by winning a national assembly seat of Mardan that scions of big landholding families used to treat like their fiefdom. He had the floor Thursday and instantly swayed the press gallery by admitting that he continued to feel thoroughly disappointed since elected to the national assembly.

“Everything you experience here does not represent the true Pakistan,” he lamented. Our people are condemned to suffer long hours of load shedding, “but the assembly building and residential apartments of its members are kept cool thanks to around the clock air-conditioning. We are served with luxurious lunches and dinners, while the wretched of earth do not know how to secure essential two meals for themselves and their families.”

After counting these conscience-pricking anomalies, the Mujahid from Mardan doubly impressed us by revealing that he never joined free lunches provided by the national assembly during its sittings. Similarly, he has opted not to use the cooler fitted in his apartment with the conscious decision to continue living like ordinary people of Pakistan.

After telling such soul-stirring things, he shocked many of us by passionately demanding that Mumtaz Qadri, who had killed Salman Taseer, a former Governor Punjab in a high-end street of Islamabad three years ago, should be released from jail. Doing this, he never cared to recall that Qadri was a serving police officer. He was assigned to protect the Governor; yet brutally violated the call of duty and later owned his brutal act with self-righteous pride.

I sincerely wish that people like Shah Mahmood Qureshi or Dr Shireen Mazari had taken the floor immediately after Mujahid’s speech to say some words for damage control. Either of them could at least clarify that Mujahid Ali Khan had expressed but his personal feelings regarding a sensitive matter. But they preferred to act callously indifferent.

Javed Hashmi was also sitting in the house. Instead of sitting on the bench allotted to him on the second row behind Shah Mahmood Qureshi he, however, preferred to stay put in a seat placed in the last row of opposition benches. Ms Mazari was seen shuttling between him and Qureshi to exchange notes on some issue in an agitated manner. Soon we found out about what the whole fuss has been going on.

When the deputy speaker invited Javed Hashmi to speak on budgetary proposals, the whimsical rebel from Multan looked baffled and agitated. After taking the mike he revealed, “I have categorically told the PTI leader that my name should not be put in the list of people who should speak for our party on the proposed budget. Yet, they seemed to have done it.” The cat obviously came running out of the bag, substantiating rumours that Hashmi was not feeling too good with Qureshi’s selection as the PTI’s deputy parliamentary leader these days.

I am least pushed to find more on tensions amongst celebrity PTI leaders. Like the rest of my colleagues, I am rather keen to find out whether Imran Khan and his party owned the demand of instant and unconditional release of a killer in police uniform. If yes is the answer to this question, I am seriously worried about living in “Naya (new) Pakistan” that the PTI promise to build with spirited shouts for Tabdeeli (the change).

As the leader of one-seat party, Ejaz-ul-Haq fully exploited his privilege to speak on and on when given the mike. The operative part of his speech, though, remained focused to condemn some “reckless journalists and anchors who proudly reported Mehmood Khan Achakzai’s anti-Army and anti-ISI speech” that he had delivered in the house some days ago.

The heir of General Zia was furious in taking on media persons who keep “bad-mouthing the ISI, which works overtime to protect this country”. These journalists, he regretted, do not report the nefarious acts of subversion that anti-Pakistan agencies like the CIA, RAW and MOSSAD stage in Pakistan, especially Balochistan, through their agents. “To prove their patriotism, such media persons must investigate and report what more than 10 consulates of India were doing in Afghanistan,” he kept demanding with censorious thundering and finger waggling.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 21^st, 2013.