Humphrey of “ Yes, Prime Minister” is a character that stays in our minds but this super bureaucrat that rises to the position of cabinet secretary and manipulates a blundering PM in Her Majesty’s government to his own advantage, has created an illusion outside the small screen. That all such mandarins are always males. Not any more and certainly not in Pakistan.
We hear that every high bureaucrat that gets into trouble finds that this position and strength is passed on temporarily or permanently to a particular female bureaucrat. It happened in the cabinet division, in the health ministry, in the info ministry (ask Ms Awan) and recently in the defence ministry. They say that the PM does not as much as lift his finger without his cabinet secretary and that has ruffled a lot of feathers in Islamabad. What a female Humphrey in our ranks? Well why not. Pakistan is known to be the first in many things so why not this as well.
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We hear that investment bankers in the “free world” have hit upon a new avenue of investment. It is “high value divorces”. And there are plenty of them around with spouses getting anything from three to fifteen million dollars and even more.
These bankers put up financing for the party that hopes to profit from a break up but does not have the funds to hire the equivalent of a “devil’s advocate” for the job.
Apparently, these money wizards also deal with the “recovery” option where they invest with those trying to recover dirty money deposited in off shore companies and Swiss banks. We hear that this option has been discussed by NAB but merely as an intellectual exercise. Not surprisingly it has been rejected as “unadvisable.”
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Apparently every parliamentarian has some guidelines or simply a survival plan by which he operates. A VVIP in Islamabad who seems to ride every storm with just a scratch or two has been generous enough to share his successful formula with a party loyalist and his pleader.
It is a simple four point plan which we recommend should be shaped into a hand book and passed to his party serfs. And so it goes. One: have no principles Two: do not resist an irresistible force. Three: resist till it becomes an irresistible force. Four: if nothing works, throw your money at them.
To this we would like to add two more points. Step five: take a trip abroad and if that does not melt their wicked hearts there is step six: throw a doctor’s certificate at them, never mind what it says.
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