“Are you, sir, aware of the story of the boy who cried wolf?”
“Yes, I did experience a childhood on this planet.”
-Kings of Summer (2013)
The Panama Joint Investigation team has recently sent a litany of complaints to the institution that formed it: the Supreme Court. We are being intimidated, we are being harassed through state institutions etc etc. Amongst the people named was, of course, one Nehal Hashmi. The latter made a now infamous, disgusting speech against the members of the JIT, in which he threatened not just the members of the body but also their families.
Now some of these complaints, like the one against Hashmi, are completely justified. And some, like the ones against state institutions, are more than plausible and should definitely be investigated. There are problems on that front; since the court cannot investigate itself and has to order investigation agencies to do the same, all of whom are, unfortunately members of the JIT. Catch-22.
But it is one particular complaint that is not doing the JIT any favours. The complaint against the media. In the complaints, the JIT had profiled a comprehensive list of the TV anchors and pundits who had been speaking about the JIT. I am not throwing around the word ‘comprehensive’ here; the Tube has read Pemra complaints against erring TV programs and even they are not as lengthy and thorough as the section about the media.
The words of TV anchors have been transcribed in great detail, as the reader can see in the accompanying picture. One can only hope that the JIT members did not do this themselves and had another poor soul do it. If they did, then they are spending more time watching TV than doing what their body was constituted for.
The members of the JIT are but human and humans can have fragile egos and thin skins. One can show empathy with them on that front. But that is what comes with the job. By giving such a puerile complaint, they have automatically made suspect the seriousness of their other complaints, some of whom just might be completely justified.
