Well, talk of Pakistan’s crumbling state owned enterprises and derelict infrastructure appears bullet points in PowerPoint presentations. But at the recent pow-wows between the government and the South Asia wing of the World Bank, the visiting, um, world bankers got a taste of the whole shebang themselves when the government functionaries that the national airline was supposed to be ferrying from one city to the next somehow managed to throw the whole itinerary out of whack.
The prime minister’s recent speech was replete with poetic flourish and rhetorical splendour. It was written by a writer-advisor of his, a journalist based in Lahore.
All well and good, this. It is standard practice all over the world. Even the pathologically articulate Barak Obama had a speech-writer. But the premier’s speechwriter, a regular on the talk show circuit, also took it upon himself to be effusive in his praise of the said speech!