The ban on the telecast of the speeches of MQM supremo Altaf Hussain is a tad unfair and it needs to be challenged in court as a violation of fundamental rights.
If the party indeed is the gallery of rogues that it is accused of being, then it should be dealt with using due process. And its illegal activities on the ground should be clamped down on, not its communication on mass media. This whole business of a gag order is unseemly.
With the Pakistani television drama industry churning out regurgitations of the same couple of plots, the average viewer is bored. And nothing can shake off that ennui like an Altaf Hussain live broadcast to a fikri nashist.
Below, online viewers can see a recent clip, where our guy is speaking to an assembled crowd, containing a large number of women, who are sitting in as orderly a manner as one has come to expect from an MQM audience. Dear Leader is explaining to them, believe it or not, the process of fertilisation amongst humans. “As the married ones amongst you would know….”
In his spiel, he pauses for a bit, expecting the bright pupils of the class to complete his sentence, which one of the overzealous party workers does, “Ji Bhai! Reproduction ka amal, Bhai!”
At the end of the video, he tells his (captive) audience that there was no leader in the country other than him who would tell them these things.
Though the automata attending such lectures usually have to agree with whatever he says, this time their agreement was in earnest. “Ji Bhai, nahi bata sakta koi aur leader.”
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As Saleem Safi once noted in his usual wry style in a column, the most abused demographic within the country is the MQM spokesperson. Yes, forget the Baloch, Pashtun or religious minorities. It is the MQM spokesperson who doesn’t know what will strike their leader’s fancy that they will have to support on the TV shows. Whether it is a complete about-turn or a something fabulously incorrect, they just have to support it.
This time, it was MQM’s Rehan Hashmi’s lot to defend his leader’s bio-lecture. Does our Holy Book have mentions of the act or not, he asked. Do we, as Muslims, have to read the Holy Book or not, he asked again. Therefore, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the speech. Ipso facto, guys.
Those on the programme asked him not to take that line of reasoning because, in this country, any statement could be taken as blasphemous.