ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani music video ridiculing the powerful military, inflation and systemic violence has gone viral on the Internet, racking up more than 85,000 hits days after being posted on YouTube.
Produced by little-known pop group Beygairat Brigade, or Shameless Brigade, it mocks the raft of political leaders many Pakistanis despair over but breaks ground in daring to lampoon army chief of staff General Ashfaq Kayani.
Considered Pakistan's most powerful man, Kayani is rarely the subject of public mirth in a country where the military is feared and revered in equal measures.
But for three singers from Lahore, Pakistan's cultural capital near the border with India, there were no holds barred.
“With such hullabaloo about the extension, the chief has gone into hibernation,” they croon, referring to his three-year extension in the job and apparent refusal of US demands for tougher action on Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants.
The song criticises the outcry of popular support for the policeman who shot dead liberal politician Salman Taseer.
It refers also to cleric Abdul Aziz, who fled a government siege on the radical Red Mosque in Islamabad in 2007, as the mullah who “escaped in a veil”and says Pakistan's late Nobel prize winner Abdus Salam is a “forgotten tale.”
Salam won the Nobel prize for Physics in 1979 with Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg, but has been largely disowned by Pakistanis who bitterly oppose the minority Ahmadi sect to which he belongs.
The pop band take on former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shahbaz, ridiculing their baldness, and assails cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan and the powerful chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.
Calling the song “Aalu Anday” -- the egg and potato dish cooked in Pakistani homes when meat is not available -- the lyrics also poke fun at the rising cost of lentils in a country torn apart by attacks and natural disasters.
The singers hold up different placards in the video, one of which says “This video is sponsored by the Zionists”.
At the end, the lead singer appears with a poster saying: “If you want a bullet through my head, 'like' this video.”
YouTube watchers can click on a “like” icon to show their approval for the video, which can be viewed at