ISLAMABAD, Dec 19: Amid a somewhat non-stop practice of renaming existing roads, hospitals and public structures after the late Banazir Bhutto one way or the other, now the government has taken the decision to issue Rs10 coin on the first death anniversary of the popular leader.

“The commemorative coin will be issued by the State Bank of Pakistan in the quantity of 300,000 pieces,” the government said.

Founder of the Nation Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah is the sole figure whose portraits are carried on the Pakistani coins, except for a single instance in which the national poet Allama Mohammad Iqbal was also shown on a Rs1 coin, which was later withdrawn.

But, in the contemporary politics, it is only Ms Bhutto who will have this prestige. And, the Pakistani nation will have the Rs10 coin for the first time in their lives, perhaps reminding the nation that the rupee is fast loosing its value despite the injection of loans by the International Monitory Fund (IMF).

Even the first prime minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan, who was assassinated in the same famous Liaquat Bagh in Rawalpindi during a public meeting where Benazir was shot, did not get the posthumous honour to be remembered by people while trading goods for money or vice versa.

Publishing of the portraits of literary figures and national heroes on the postal stamps is, however, a story too different to be compared with the currency notes and coins issued by the central bank of a country.

But, for many people, this is merely a cheap price tag on the memories of as versatile and dynamic a leader as that of BB.

“It looks cheap to commemorate the memory of the popular leader like this,” says a man in the street.

“Why not to erect something new, to make a foundation, to establish a research body or at least change the dismal state of affairs of those very public structures which have already been renamed after BB?,” the next thing this man in the street, Mubarak Ali, asked.

For the people of Rawalpindi, and for the matter the federal capital, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) which prophesied a possible change when General (retired) Pervez Musharraf was in power is now mere a symbol of “name change” or an instrument to re-ordering the existing words order.