Lahore ‘Puls’s’ own goal and other stories

Whilst Monier Aslam may disagree with my punishment for terrorists, he is wrong to say it’s like “in the...

How very stupid of the Lahore police to use force against the 100-150 PTI members who were protesting alleged rigging in a Lahore PA constituency, scoring an own goal against the government it serves.

It compounded this silliness by not obeying for several critical hours, the CM’s repeated orders to desist and release those detained. We know how ham-handed the Puls is, but how very idiotic could it get, specially when it was raining at the time and which would have forced the protestors to abandon their protest anyway?

I watched the fiery Andaleeb Abbas, yet another ‘leader’ in a party where every second person is one(!) on TV constantly referring to some policemen saying they were acting on orders from above, suggesting Shahbaz Sharif himself. The question is why he would order arrests one minute and release the very next?

What they obviously meant was someone high up in the police ranks and not the chief minister himself. In any case, it was good to see not only the CM but the prime minister himself take serious note of the matter and give instructions that ham-fisted behaviour should never be repeated. It is very much the right of every political party to protest peacefully as the PTI was doing that day.

Talking about the PTI takes me straight to the party taking credit for the Honourable Chief Justice of the Peshawar High Court’s initiative of instituting a mobile court travelling in a bus from place to place dispensing justice ‘at the doorstep of the people’. A commendable step no doubt by His Lordship, and good news that the court has already settled a case in Hayatabad near Peshawar.

However, one should humbly like to ask some questions regarding this method of dispensing justice: 1) Is this court only for Peshawar and environs? 2) Will it only go around asking if there is any fresh dispute in the area it is travelling in? 3) Will it also take up old cases held up for years because the poor litigants find it difficult to travel all the way to Peshawar? 4) If so, how will the lawyers and their munshis carrying case files travel? In their own cars/motorcycles, or in the judicial bus? 5) Will a prison van travel with the bus in case people are handed custodial sentences? 6) And last but not least, will a mobile canteen follow the bus around carrying food and refreshments, or will the bus make periodic stops at wayside eateries?

Elsewhere now, and to a letter published in this paper on August 27 from one ‘Monier Aslam’ (whose idiom is well known to me by the way). Whilst he is entitled to disagree with what I have suggested as punishment for terrorists, he is wrong to say it’s like “in the movies”. Read up on incarceration methods employed elsewhere in the world for the most dangerous murderers and psychopaths, my friend.

But what I take extreme exception to is his implying that I took a cheap shot at the “Commando quivering in his shoes on being indicted for BB’s murder”. Did Monier Aslam not notice the Commando’s ashen face as he was being led out of the courtroom on live TV? Indeed, did he not actually see him run away like a common criminal from the Islamabad High Court (IHC) when his bail for locking up the superior court judges was cancelled?

He goes on: “Unfortunately, the ability he (I) does not seem to have is not to take cheap shots against a person who is down at the moment. It is not the done thing.” I see. As to ‘cheap shots’, he seems to have completely missed my articles in which I, a) had criticised the fact that the Red Mosque cleric’s former lawyer was hearing the case in the IHC, and b) that the man be indicted and let off on parole to visit his dear old mother in Dubai which his most able lawyer Ahmad Raza Kasuri, with tears in his eyes, was requesting. I had also said the Commando will repeat his IHC performance, i.e., vamoose, and that we would then be well rid of him.

As for it being not the ‘done thing’ in the Commado’s case, it was certainly the ‘done thing’ to bad-mouth the ‘bloody civilian’ (there’s that word again, pal!) ELECTED leaders when the tin hats (there’s that word again, buddy!) committed treason and overthrew them, eh? What calumny and filthy language and lies were not used to bad-mouth ZAB, BB, and NS, and their families too?

I have written reams on the subject and would suggest Monier Aslam go to Google to refresh his memory about what ‘bloody civilians’ have gone through at the hands of those he defends. From ZAB taken to the gallows in what most people KNOW was judicial murder; to BB, then only a young girl, incarcerated in the most notorious jails for years; to NS locked up in a cell in Attock Fort.

Not the ‘done thing’ eh? Does Aslam recall Begum Kulsoom Nawaz’s car being lifted by a fork-lifter with her and another lady in it, and kept hoisted in the air for hours in Lahore while her husband was in exile? Shame. Does he recall Begum Bhutto’s head cracked open by a police lathi in Gaddafi Stadium, and blood flowing down her face when her husband was locked up in jail? Shame.

I could have written 2,000 more words in reply to this silly letter but let me conclude by saying that Monier Aslam is using a familiar DeepState tactic: attempting to shelter those few greedy and Bonapartist and foolish Rommels and Guderians(!) behind the noble sacrifices of our young officers and jawans. Shelter those who gave us East Pakistan; repeated army takeovers; repression and sectarianism and heroin and the Kalashnikov, and jihadism and terror in what is left of Pakistan. Not to forget the Kargil catastrophe. Absolute shame.

P.S. Does ‘Monier Aslam’ live far from Lahore these days? Has he seen leased provincial and central government lands in the cantonment being divvied up into several crore rupee (each) plots amongst those he defends? Sharamnaak!

Published in The Express Tribune, August 30^th, 2013.

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