It’s quite sad how some people (and others who somehow became interviewers, not journalists) couldn’t see this coming and think yet they’ve done a great stroke by misplacing their unbridled faith randomly in a motley group of individuals who catapulted from abject dormancy and obscurity to unfettered frivolity in a matter of months! Couldn’t this dreamy eyed band see what was going on and what subsequent direction (or lack thereof) would amount to?
The inspiration for this editorial stems from the confessions of a Tv interviewer who admits he was misled. Could it be that like so many others, he allowed himself to be? Dreaming the dream that the cricketer had knit like a spider’s web? But nah, knitting etc means crediting an individual with intelligence to do so!
Time has proven that the naysayers were right not to set store by this rudderless raft set afloat by “hidden hands” in the stormy seas of Pakistani politics.
That said, one must give credit to the “yarn” (pun intended) from which this party’s fabric has been patched together! This is where the earlier mention of a rudderless raft raises it incredulous yet ugly head. The mixed (read CONFUSED) bag of unchanneled personalities such as the regressive Islamists with pretensions of righteousness and equality (except that they’re vociferous against the construction of a Hindu temple for Pakistani Hindus in Islamabad) to the forward thinking modernists, mouthpiece “monologuers”; to those who’ll rant for the sake of it and on to some who don’t seem to have a clue to reality but will breathlessly defend the government’s flounderings!
Some in this hurriedly thrown together “band of brothers” have found direction lately, Science Minister Fawad Chaudhry being a case in point. Even though he might defend his leader and his party when he sees fit, he’s well within his right to do so. At least he stands up for progress and free thought!
This can’t be said about the Ali Mohammads of this world, unfortunately, a gentleman seemingly behind parliamentary bills reminiscent of dictator Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization effort — and champion of the move to declare in parliament that the state building a temple for Hindu Pakistanis is unislamic, or suggesting in some way that building a temple would be an affront to Islam.
Then some were as confused as Fauzia Kasuri, who swung this way and that, undecided about what she or her party stood for. She was asked to leave. Outspoken Uzma Kardar (sometimes too outspoken) was recently shown the door as well and though Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari might rant and rave at matters not touching upon her sphere, she doesn’t have much to say about nor show for her subject. There are several cases in point.
As for Andaleeb Abbas, her musings sound like a derelict train on a rattley track.
Now it’s all very well to frantically wave undisclosed documents at detractors, PTI officialdom seems to miss the point that the forum for all the government’s demonstrations and remonstrations is the National Assembly, Parliament! Outside that, you can scream bloody murder but that just raises eyebrows!
From the outset, it was fine for some to see the party in power now as recourse to reconstruction, it turns out that’s more like recourse to retribution!
