Never fails to surprise us, does he?
Self-righteousness and a tendency to blame others for his own shortcoming are Ch Nisar’s unfading birthmarks. Speaking in the Senate he rebutted those who criticised him for failing to stop major terrorist attacks or held him responsible for non-implementation of NAP. He called the criticism a negative propaganda against him, his Ministry and the PML-N government. The task of the Interior Ministry ended with sending alerts to the provinces. After that it was for theprovincial governments to take action
In order to defend the indefensible Ch Nisar takes recourse to curious notions. One such notion is that impure things become kosher by changing their names. According to him, when the terrorist Lej rechristened itself into ASWJ, it became a sectarian outfit, even if it had been banned. There was therefore nothing wrong on the Interior Minster’s part to invite the banned outfit for talks right inside Islamabad’s Red Zone. He also stated that sectarian violence had been continuing for 1,300 years. This implies that it should be taken as a norm. The idea is not only a highly divisive but aalso a justification for communal attacks. What is more it forgets that tolerance of sectarian differences has been the dominant factor in Muslim societies. The statement was bound to cause an uproar and a walk out from the Senate
Instead of answering the questions put to him about recent disappearances of five liberal bloggers the unrepentant interior minister maintained that unlike its predecessors his government is not in the business of disappearances. His ministry therefore cannot be held responsible for such acts. At the best it can try to locate those picked up. Since three of the five missing bloggers were taken away from Lahore it is for the provincial government to recover them. Unless every city of Pakistan and its highways and unpaved tracks have CCTV cameras installed, little can be done by the Interior Minister alone because when people areremoved from the Safe City of Islamabad as Salman Haider was, locating them is like finding a pin in a haystack.
