As a punching bag, you couldn’t find one better than Mehmood Khan Achakzai these days. The man has been more than vocal on a number of contentious issues in the past and hasn’t been afraid of pulling non punches. That lends from some seething tempers from mainstream Pakistan.
So clear has he been about not backing down from his words that when the Election Commission of Pakistan launched an inquiry on a petition seeking his disqualification from the National Assembly, the man refused to back down. Nothing wrong with what I have said.
The petition will most certainly be quashed, but it is absurd for the ECP to even entertain it in the first place.
Questioning the security establishment after a particularly horrific attack that has wiped out the legal fraternity of a bustling city, indeed the entire province, shouldn’t be an offensive statement to the most patriotic of Pakistanis. Even those who bleed green and have moist eyes every time a milli naghma plays on the radio are beginning to question why.
That’s the thing with allowing the military to encroach upon public discourse. Soon enough, even questioning why an expensive golf course has been constructed is to be construed as sedition. In fact, since the military budget appears as no more than a couple of lines in the annual finance bill, we’re already at that stage.
Of course, Mehmood Khan’s statements follow his slightly earlier, controversial statement about Afghan refugees living in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. That didn’t really endear him to many.
The resulting problem is that it is better for the media to trash him on their shows rather than actually have him on their shows. To leverage some of that hatred into higher ratings. Though, truth be told, it wouldn’t be in Achakzai’s interest to appear on said shows to begin with. If he were to appear on one of the “shouters” shows, like Mubasher Lucman’s, for instance, the latter would be more interested in showing vitriol to appeal to his hypernationalist audience members rather than actually talk to the man about issues.
Rarely, presumably on the condition that there is, in fact, no shouting, he has appeared on shows, like Asma Sheerazi’s. And, most recently, on Channel 24’s DNA, where Arif Nizami played the good cop to Ghulam Hussain’s slightly irritated cop.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4p8uzq_dna-18th-august-2016_school
On the show, the man makes a pretty compelling case. Get the Pakistani state to agree that there is going to be no violence perpetrated against Afghanistan on our soil and “Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman, Aftab Sherpao, Asfandyar Wali Khan and me, their chaprrasi” will ensure that this cycle of violence stops. If it doesn’t, kick us all out.
More telling in this last statement, apart from the theatrical style, is the fact that the leaders he has named span the spectrum, don’t they? The cost of the state’s policy of strategic depth isn’t lost on anyone. This isn’t a liberal-versus-conservative issue anymore. From Fazl-ur-Rehman on one end to Asfandyar Wali Khan on the other, and all those who come in between, it is clear to all that things have to change. Is it because of this that all of the aforementioned have also faced assassination attempts?
