CITY NOTES
I suspect that not enough people have noticed that a year has passed since the greatest event in the history of the world happened: the PTI was elected to office. There was dancing in the streets. Sweets were distributed to the public.
There was a function in Islamabad, but generally the public seemed lukewarm.
As a matter of fact, there wasn’t even much criticism of the PTI.
Usually, the opposition, traitorous beasts that they are, try to ferret out inconvenient facts, like the value of the dollar, or the inflation rate, or the level of foreign investment, in an attempt to undermine the tabdeeli brought by having a new leadership which was honest, clean and competent.
But perhaps a year has bred the contempt that comes from familiarity. We don’t know how lucky we are. Especially now that the COAS has had a fresh term given to him. And as we all know, the government is perfectly independent, though on the same page. And these days, they need to be on the same page.
Otherwise we would hear voices about how the situation in Kashmir should be handled differently. I wonder if it is the crisis in Kashmir that has distracted people from the PTI’s first year in office? It has certainly been the reason given for General Bajwa’s extension.
It might be, especially with a forward-looking person like Imran Khan as prime minister, that the past is to be sacrificed for closer attention to Kashmir.
Especially when Imran has labelled Modi a ‘Hindu supremacist’, getting them mixed in with ‘white supremacists’ like the killers in Houston and Dayton. The problem is that the US President is a white supremacist too. In fact, maybe that’s why he gets along so well with Modi. They’re both supremacists, one white, one Hindu.
Calling Modi a supremacist didn’t stop Modi from overflying Pakistan on his way to Biarritz, where he went to attend the G7 Summit.
Well, Imran can’t keep an eye on everything. He was probably distracted from Modi’s overflight, as well as the situation in held Kashmir, by developments in Nairobi, Kenya.
Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko told a memorial service for MP Ken Okoth, that Okoth had had a son out of wedlock with a member of the Constituent Assembly of Nairobi. Sonko then called on women to tell about their affairs with politicians. The late Mr Okoth had an Italian widow, with whom he had had no children. He had died at only 41, of cancer.
Now what does this have to do with Imran? None of the three main characters, Okoth, his mistress, or Bigmouth Sonko, was accused of any corruption, or had ever built a cancer hospital. But Imran is probably infuriated at this interference into politicians’ personal affairs, and will not be conducting a dharna anywhere in Nairobi.
He won’t be going to Hong Kong either, where there are protests going on. The last time he protested, with the dharna so many years ago, he caused the Chinese President to cancel his visit to Islamabad. He wouldn’t want to put the Chinese President to any further inconvenience, would he?
Of course, speaking of that blessed dharna, which was about election rigging, it seems that now he is in government, he’s not so concerned about the sanctity of elections. Maybe that’s why he was ready to go through with the presidential order appointing two members of the ECP, only to have the CEC not swear them in.
Well, Imran can wait. The CEC is also retiring this year, and this time Imran will get a CEC appointed the same way–without consulting the Leader of the Opposition whom he knows is a corrupt element.
That CEC will then swear in the missing members, and all will be fine. Remember, the problem with the 2013 election, was that it was stolen from the PTI. The ECP is a fine body of men so long as positive results are produced. And so long as it is properly selected.
