LAHORE, Dec 26: Confusion and mismanagement marred the civic reception organized by the Lahore district government for visiting Iranian President Syed Mohammad Khatami at the Shalamar Gardens here on Wednesday.
A large number of people from all walks of life, including parliamentarians, local leaders of different religious parties, prominent citizens, members of the district government and schoolchildren, attended the function.
They were made to sit at tables in the lawns of the huge Mughal garden’s first deck whereas the rostrum was facing the second deck below it.
Initially, no one was allowed to sit on the chairs spread all over the lower deck. And when the Iranian president entered the Shalamar Bagh, they were unoccupied.
Realizing this, the management hurriedly asked the police band and plainclothesmen occupying seats in the first deck of the gardens to swiftly move to the lower deck. The Iranian president waved his hands while facing the lower deck when the police were occupying the empty seats there.
People still sitting in the upper deck were also made to move to the lower deck where a majority of seats were still empty. During this confusion, the police band played the national anthems of Pakistan and Iran. A music band playing popular music at the lower deck never stopped in the meantime.
The management changed the direction of the dais towards the people sitting on left side at the upper deck when they could not fill seats at the lower deck. But this led to further confusion as foreign and local media personnel below had to return to the upper deck.
During the commotion, many official Iranian photographers and journalists accompanying Mr Khatami tried to go closer to him, but they were blocked by police. Acman Teimour, an official photographer of the president, was pushed away by Lahore SSP (Operations) Aftab Cheema.
The photographer was never allowed access to the president even after protests by the accompanying Iranian diplomats. “I will not allow you this whosoever you are,” the SSP said, adding that he would lodge a formal protest with the authorities over the “attitude of the photographer”.
The Iranian president was quite mindful of the Urdu translation of his Persian speech and found two of the local interpreters at fault. They were changed and the third, who continued till the end, too was vague.
Huge portraits of President Khatami, President Pervez Musharraf, the Punjab chief minister and the governor hung in the gardens but there was none of the prime minister’s.
The confusion spilled over to the roads after the departure of the Iranian president and top officials of the provincial government, with the traffic police trying to control traffic for quite some time.
In order to do this, they blocked traffic on link roads till the clearance of the main route, causing a great deal of inconvenience to the people.