- Not even decency?
It was perhaps too much to expect a professional handling of the unfortunate Sahiwal incident by the PTI government, considering its track record across so many areas, but it could surely have acted in a more dignified manner. From senior provincial and federal ministers backing, as if in possession of irrefutable evidence, the police version that changed no less than four times, to a JIT report that has missed its deadline and then some, there is something even more deplorable about the way this government has handled this tragedy from the outset.
What did CM Buzdar really think he was doing, for example, when he took those flowers to that poor child? And, worse still, how do you think he felt when the injured child was asleep and all the officials posed for a photograph? As if that were not bad enough, what’s this spectacle about dragging the suffering family all the way to Islamabad to meet the president and chairman Senate, only to be kept waiting for hours and then told that both gentlemen were out of the country? It’s not bad enough that the state, despite promises from everybody all the way up to the prime minister, cannot provide justice to grievously wronged citizens. They must now, unfortunately, also be humiliated just so the big guns can score political points.
And what rocket science, really, is behind all this delay in the investigation? There are very simple questions to be answered. The CTD’s (counter terror department) SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) are as clear as black and white, so why did its personnel, based supposedly on confirmed intelligence, butcher that family in that manner? If they had the intel, why are they still bending over backwards to piece it together? How hard is it to confirm where the order came from? And what the book says about such abuse of power? Strangely, the prime minister’s claims about justice continue to ring hollow just because of the inefficiency and incompetence, or could it be corruption, of state departments.