It’s nice to see Right triumph, and Evil defeated. It’s not a guilty verdict in any case, but the victory of Sadiq Sanjrani. It was victory enough for him to be elected Senate chairman last year. After all, it was the first time that someone from Balochistan was elected Senate chairman, making him next in line to the president. Well, we have had an ethnic Baloch as President in Asif Zardari, but he counts as a Sindhi. And we have had Sindhi presidents ever since, though the last two have been Muhajirs, not ‘Sons of the soil.’ ‘Sons of the soil’ (Sindhi speakers) are divided into Baloch and Samaat. That makes Benazir the last Samaat to have held high office. She was preceded by Muhammad Khan Junejo as well as her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Mustafa Jatoi, who was caretaker PM in 1990, was Baloch.
We have had Zafarullah Jamali as a Baloch who held the prime ministership, though he was rather unceremoniously dismissed. The Senate chairmanship might well go to Balochistan because the member the Opposition came up as its candidate was also a Baloch, Hasil Bizenjo.
He lost, though, which would be a bit of a disappointment. He shouldn’t have contested, though, because not only he lost, but he’s been summoned by a Gujranwala judge for making remarks against the ISI as well. His only defence would be finding incriminating videos of the judge.
Another possibility would be if he could produce the CNICs (lying with FBR after buying Senators) of the ISI operatives. Y’know, ISI or no ISI, senators would never be dictated to, just be bought. But you can’t make large payments without handing over a copy of your CNIC. I wonder if the concerned Senators will disclose this income in their tax statements? If they do, will NAB get involved?
Well, at least Hasil Bizenjo isn’t in NAB custody. He’s not just a politician, you know. He’s also the son of the late Ghaus Bux Bizenjo, who had many qualities, one of them being an ability to sniff out intelligence people. I was at a press conference when he suddenly pounced on a middle-aged man and asked him which paper he was from. He refused to answer, which probably meant the real reporter would identify himself, and Mir Ghaus Bux ordered him to leave. These days, that would be unpatriotic. In those days, the middle-aged man left in embarrassment.
In NAB custody are Yousaf and Abdul Aziz Abbas, who were offloaded from a Hajj flight. They’re nephews of Nawaz Sharif, sons of his late brother Abbas. The whole plane must have thought they were offloaded for the most embarrassing of reasons, like narcotics being found in their luggage.
Well, the container from Uruguay stopped at Hamburg port en route to Antwerp, by the German police, was not on any Hajj flight, but it did contain about five tons of cocaine worth more than a $1 billion. Where the container was going after Antwerp no one knows. Rumours that it was to have come to Pakistan are unconfirmed. Besides, surely PM House doesn’t need any cocaine, does it? The Hamburg cops, though, I’m sure, are as high as kites.
Swedish cops could not be as high, as they had made no drug bust, just arrested the rapper A$AP Rocky for assault. Well, President Trump got him off, even though he was blasting another black man, Rep Elijah Cummings, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, who had grilled the Homeland Security acting chief about conditions at the border. These comments, in which Trump pointed out that conditions in Representative Cummings’ district of Baltimore were worse than in the border detention centres he was criticising. President Trump didn’t tell the Representative to go home, nor did he call him an ape, monkey or anything else simian.
One of the nodes of children staying in centres ill-suited for them was in El Paso, Texas. And that got into the news when a white supremacist went amok with a gun, killing 20 and wounding another 26 randomly in a Walmart. Again children were involved, because kids at the Walmart in large numbers, were preparing for the opening of the new school year today.