August 05, 2007	Sunday	Rajab 20, 1428

KARACHI: For convenience sake, let’s call him Mr Shoib. An admirably successful businessman in his early sixties, he looks younger for his years. In his spacious, expansive office, Mr Shoib requested a repeat of the question, whether he had found himself comfortable working with the democratic or the military government?

“I started out working as a clerk in a local bank, but soon got bored and moved out to do my own thing,” he said. The list of entities in his financial empire, embossed in gold and hung over the right hand wall was long enough. “Most of those are yielding profit,” he boasted. “And as Rome was not built in a day, nor was my empire,” he said.

Impatiently, I tried to put him on the track of my question. He paused for a moment and reminded that the 60-year life of this nation could be divided right through the centre: half going to the stronghold military and half to the half-hearted democracy. And then came the punch line: “A businessman is no businessman if he can not adapt himself to a change,” he said and pointed to a rack behind his chair, which was decorated with carefully framed pictures of Mr. Shoib shaking hands gleefully with Field Marshal Ayub Khan; escorting Z.A. Bhutto to the inauguration of one of his factories; taking a trophy from Nawaz Sharif and being decorated with a medal by General Musharraf. He leaned forward in his chair and said softly with a wink: “It’s all the same”.

Just as in politics, so also in cool world of business, there were no permanent friends or enemies, he explained: “Hail the victor, dump the vanquished.”

“I am with the General so long as he holds the reins,” he said and added that he would take no time or excuse to change, if and when the winds change direction. He thought there could be a small degree of difference in corruption, nepotism and favouritism, but the military boots had scarcely brought about a revolution in the life of a common man or a businessman.

He said much of the time of such rulers was occupied in justifying their own legitimacy. Few notches up or down on the international graph of ‘most corrupt’ nation, was hardly noticeable.

The country’s capital market was forever riddled with crisis; the income tax people still barge into our offices for grafts; the land grab mafia was active and poor and rich divide knew no bridging. He said he would not talk of the lot of the village folk.

Finally as I left, he called out that it was better to get over the question of which of the two were better or worse for business. “You require maneuvering,” he said and added that the secret of his success was to make lemonade when life (or country) hands down a lemon.