The deep pockets of some of our leaders with all the slush scattered about are legendary
RECENT rottweiler attacks in Pakistan’s parliament call for cheer. More power to the Public Accounts Committee’s retired major Tanvir Hussain Syed. Bravo Baig — Senator Enver that is. Men like you may yet move the littlest bit of Mount Stink metastasized by your predecessors in politics.
You are fact-diggers, mud-splashers, cover-blowers and truth-seekers. May you survive the tempests that you are tempting, angering that the ungodly tribe of fibbers, exaggerators and outrageous abusers of power to bludgeon the real number.
Tanvir’s recent joust with the information secretary, the pleaser par excellence, and the other two honchos at the information ministry is an opener of eyes half shut. As is Baig’s forays into the Umrah expenses of three former prime ministers, all on the house. But for him, we would never have known.
The information ministry is a Montessori for wannabe Goebbels and factotums micro-chipped and programmed to spread the word, goosed up of course — for who else? — but the government of the day. What fantastic leaders they are and how lucky can the man on the street get is their mendacious message. Never mind if journalists get kicked around by crazies in commando jumpsuits on ‘press freedom day’ — of all days.
Pakistan Television or PTV, the government’s handmaiden since Field Marshal Ayub Khan invented it and Altaf Gauhar perfected it, has performed so many somersaults in its paeans and pickings apart of the same person — take for example, its present chairman — that it can easily win a place in the records books as a flip-flop, two-faced creature a million times over.
Lest you forget, chairman Shaikh Rashid was a hero on PTV when Nawaz Sharif was a superhero. He became a zero when Benazir Bhutto padded across the corridors of power, was born again in Sharif’s second term, only to be banished and tortured in Bahawalpur jail when Bhutto made it back the second time around (he’ll be toast should Zardari’s dream of getting his wife to ruin us the third time come true).
Musharraf’s taken a shine to Shaikh and it appears has given him a bandwidth to brag. The Shaikh’s made a smart move in hauling in Shahid Rafi as his point man. Those of us who suffer from good memory will recall Nawaz Sharif speaking on the phone to Shahid Rafi after Justice Nasim Hussain Shah’s Supreme Court reinstalled the prime minister.
Let’s keep our eye on the ball and see how the secretary can jiggle the nepotism/favouritism charge by the PAC. The deep pockets of the information ministry with all the slush scattered about are legendary. Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayyed, ex-information minister and current de-facto head of the ruling PML, loved to schmoozefest with hacks around a hotel pool in Islamabad every other day.
Jumbo invitation cards beginning boldly with the host’s title and name covering half the card would routinely be distributed to the newspaper men and women to attend. The last invite by MH (before Musharraf felled Nawaz Sharif and trotted off Mushahid to jail) was a disaster. His chief guest, it so turned out, was some VIP from an African country (I forget which one) who was dined and juiced a day before he left Islamabad, only to make world headlines when drugs were found on his person.
And then there was that very excitable information secretary in Benazir Bhutto’s second reign who would call hacks to the PM’s secretariat (the old State Bank building) and promise them lollies as he’d hand out photocopies of factoids on how Nawaz Sharif had milked his baby — the Motorway. It was downright insulting to be called and given the Sharif corruption sheet for those not in the lifafa journalism club.
But then, the information ministry thinks it can buy anyone. Neither a “strong” parliamentarian nor an “independent” judge will be able to provide deliverance to journalists. As an aside: the Nawaz brothers are now regular users of a comb. The brothers have had hair transplants in exile. Rejuvenated, have they been watching Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr in Samson and Delilah? All else having failed, will their hirsute image do the trick?
America has no department of information; still in the Washington of today, the White House and the press corps that cover it are tangled forever in issues, often contentious and downright battleful.
Bush is not bothered and continues to massacre every other word at press conferences while Cheney gets vulgar and calls reporters at the New York Times “ass ....” right into the mike for all to hear his seven-letter word.
But Laura Bush? I couldn’t believe the soft porn standup comic that she played at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in DC. Butting in while her husband spoke, she told him to go sit down while she took command of the microphones calling the president ‘Mr Excitement’ who goes to bed at 9 o’clock leaving her a ‘desperate housewife’ ending up at Chippendales (male stripper club) with Lynne Cheney and Condi Rice. Lynne’s Secret Service code name became Dollar Bill, after the grandma stuffed dollar bills into the male strippers.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I am a desperate housewife,” announced the first lady, referring to the raunchy TV sitcom oozing with sex-starved housewives on ABC these days.
Wait ... there’s more of Laura’s naughty talk: she told the audience that Bush knew so little of animals he once milked a horse and that too a male. Bush merely grinned.
How about taking a page from the White House Correspondents’ dinner, Shaikh Rashid and Shahid Rafi, sirs? Lighten up and stop taking yourselves so self-importantly. Instead of thrashing journalists and breaking their cameras, treat them to a nice glitzy high-powered dinner. The president and the first lady should be the chief guests.
Get your press minister at our embassy in Washington to do some legwork (he just has to pick up the phone and order in a video cassette of Laura lampooning her husband) and toss it across to Army House in Pindi for its occupants to watch and learn.
Why beat up the press and then promise to hold an inquiry and then renege on the promise? Sher Afgan, the old fox, as parliamentary affairs minister, killed the resolution unanimously passed by the house to appoint a committee to probe police savagery.
The deep pockets of some of our leaders with all the slush scattered about are legendary
The information ministry is a Montessori for wannabe Goebbels and factotums micro-chipped and programmed to spread the word, goosed up of course — for who else? — but the government of the day. What fantastic leaders they are and how lucky can the man on the street get is their mendacious message. Never mind if journalists get kicked around by crazies in commando jumpsuits on ‘press freedom day’ — of all days.
Jumbo invitation cards beginning boldly with the host’s title and name covering half the card would routinely be distributed to the newspaper men and women to attend. The last invite by MH (before Musharraf felled Nawaz Sharif and trotted off Mushahid to jail) was a disaster. His chief guest, it so turned out, was some VIP from an African country (I forget which one) who was dined and juiced a day before he left Islamabad, only to make world headlines when drugs were found on his person.
But Laura Bush? I couldn’t believe the soft porn standup comic that she played at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in DC. Butting in while her husband spoke, she told him to go sit down while she took command of the microphones calling the president ‘Mr Excitement’ who goes to bed at 9 o’clock leaving her a ‘desperate housewife’ ending up at Chippendales (male stripper club) with Lynne Cheney and Condi Rice. Lynne’s Secret Service code name became Dollar Bill, after the grandma stuffed dollar bills into the male strippers.
