Much humour going around about the PTI’s choices for members of cabinet. They’ve selected a finance minister who doesn’t understand the economy, and an information minister who doesn’t…know how to talk?
This jab above was about the former Punjab information minister Fayyaz-ul-Hassan Chohan, of course, not his federal counterpart. Though the latter isn’t quite a polished and urbane communicator himself.
So, the ruling party decided – in a decision that much preceded Chohan’s eventual removal on account of a gaffe – to install a spokesperson for the Chief Minister.
The man chosen for this job is Shehbaz Gill. If the purpose was to wipe clean the slate and bring in a thoughtful practitioner for public diplomacy, then the PTI has missed the mark by several hundred kilometres. It’s like the IAF in Balakot. The party seems to have missed the JeM for the trees.
The fellow has a quality that could be described by some of the still-enchanted PTI types as ‘playing on the front foot.’ To everyone else, his approach could be described as downright boorish. And, as has become the standard prototype for the ruling party, incompetent.
Consider his recent appearance on Dawn News’s Arifa Noor’s programme. The anchor had a simple enough question: The CM has passed through the provincial assembly an act that had increased his (and others’) salary and perks. The prime minister had subsequently expressed disapproval and directed the CM to reverse the decision, to which, we were told, the latter had complied . Since this was an act of parliament and not an executive decision, how could the CM ‘reverse the decision’ without tabling another bill?
This was, as mentioned above, a simple enough question. She hadn’t asked him to prove the Goldbach Conjecture. The tone that the fellow took in answering the question exemplified the aforementioned boorish-incompetent combo. You aren’t a lawyer and neither am I, he said in the first of many times that he would repeat the line during the course of the next ten minutes. You should have called a lawyer, not me.
The anchor tried to reason with him, but to no avail. This was rather silly. He is the spokesperson. She wasn’t asking him about the motherlode parametres of the some petroleum dig somewhere in the boondocks, about which he could have professed not to have the figures at his fingertips. This was a highly publicised issue, the redressal of which he should have been prepared on. This is sheer incompetence.
Not to mention the rudeness. You see, even if he had not known the course of action, an acceptable line would have been to say that the provincial government has taken the decision in principle, and since the party controls both executive and legislature, the issue could surely be resolved, without getting into the details, which he could province at a later stage.
Stay tuned in this space for the trajectory of the illustrious Mr Gill. Even though there had been reports in some sections of the press about the fellow’s elevation to be able to sign certain documents on behalf of the CM, his career just might go the Chohan route. Ticking bomb.
