Shahid Khaqan Abbassi should thank his lucky stars that NAB arrested him, and not the ANF.
At worst, they could have recovered case documents from him, as opposed to the several kilos of heroin that they recovered from Rana Sanaullah’s car.
And if it had been the local police, there would have been a recovery of a buffalo tied to the bumper of the car.
One post (on Facebook?, or some Whatsapp group?) said Liaquat Ali Khan’s killer had been recovered. I wonder if anyone noticed that Shahid Khaqan and Rana Sanaullah were first elected to an Assembly the same year. Abbassi went to the National Assembly in place of his father, who had died that year, and Rana Sana had been elected to the Punjab Assembly, where he stayed until the last election, when he went to the National Assembly.
But I’m sure Shahid Khaqan’s successor Imran Khan was not thinking about him. He must be preparing for the visit he is making to the USA. But his host is in the sort of trouble that needs careful watching.
He let off a tweet in which he told four Democrat Congresswomen to go back to the country they came from. The only catch is that of Reps Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), only Rep Omar was not born in the USA. All four are Democrat, progressive and women of colour (a Hispanic, a Somali, an African-American and a Palestinian).
Unlike Trump himself, who is a white male, and grandson of migrants from Germany. His current wife is also a migrant. The ‘go-back-where-you-came-from’ is perhaps more reprehensible than other hate speech, because it is addressed first to children. I doubt if any of the Congresswomen had heard it from Trump for the first time. And children don’t know how to respond.
OK, if someone calls you a coon, you shoot back ‘honky!’; but what if you don’t know where to go back? Because, in the words of American singer Bruce Springsteen, you were ‘Born in the USA.’ Luckily, don’t have race issues. We have caste. Not as badly as India, but we still do.
The next step is for him to call an African-American an ‘ape’. That, and ‘monkey’ were common epithets back in the day, like when Donald Trump was growing up, for African-Americans. I’m sure that he was pleased that Zimbabwe was suspended by the ICC.
He would well remember when it was Rhodesia, a white supremacist outpost under Ian Smith, as was South Africa under a succession of Boer heads of government. I wonder whether Trump thinks of Nelson Mandela as a ‘tarbaby’ or a ‘darkie’.
Imran, of course, sees himself as white, and would probably label Trump a corrupt element if he found out that he considered him a ‘nigger’. He probably considers Narendra Modi, though Modi would probably describe himself as ‘wheatish’. Well, Modi might be realistic enough to concede he is dark, but catch his mother doing so. She would say that Trump is dark, his wife is dark, Ilhan Omar is dark, but her boy is not.
Imran would like himself defined as ‘blond’. He will put the word ‘dark’ in the same category as ‘selected’ if you let him. He has escaped the World Cup debacle, as seem to have most Pakistani cricket figures.
Come to think of it, most figures seem to have survived. Except Inzamam, the Pakistani chief selector, who has said he won’t be up for renewal of his contract. Now we know why cricketers don’t have any sense of shame. Imran has bitter memories, because he had to step down from the captaincy after the World Cup.
He remains the only winning captain who had to give up the job at once. Admittedly, he had captained because he had promised it would be his last hurrah.
One place there should not be a last hurrah is the former FATA, which sent 16 MPAs to the KP Assembly. Detractors of Chief Minister Mahmood Khan say that he isn’t worth his salt, because the PTI only won five seats, instead of winning them all. Defenders point out that the majority of those elected are independents, who will act according to their self-interest. Unless they want to end up like Shahid Khaqan Abbassi.
