Conscience lost and found

March 29, 2024

This letter refers to the news report ‘Six IHC judges write to SJC over spy agencies’ interference’ (March 27, 2024).

I remember former prime minister Imran Khan supporting the agencies for taping conversations when he was in power and there were no protests by anyone at the time.

Shakir Lakhani

Karachi

https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/1173315-conscience-lost-and-found

Islamabad High Court judges have always favored Imran Khan's party (PTI) so much that some people strongly suspected they were being paid to do so. Now they've openly rebelled against the establishment, claiming that they are being pressurized in cases against PTI. In the case against Imran Khan for marrying a divorcee without observing the mandatory waiting period prescribed by Islam, they were told to proceed with the case and not declare that it is not maintainable. They've also claimed that their bedrooms were bugged by the agencies. 

It's good that they've come out in the open, but the question arises, why didn't they protest earlier, when the establishment was pressurizing them to convict Nawaz Sharif, and deny bail to his party workers? More specifically, when their favorite Imran Khan himself said that the agencies helped him in running his government, and he supported them for tapping phones of his opponents? Why did they not support Justice Shaukat Siddiqui who was not heard when he claimed that the ISI threatened him to convict Nawaz Sharif? Why this double standard?


 I've never understood why Imran Khan's supporters get so emotional whenever he is criticized. I mean, I'm never aroused when someone calls me names or says that I'm incompetent. During the recent Congressional hearings, the Assistant Secretary of State Donald Lu revealed how he was threatened by Imran Khan's supporters when he refused to admit that their leader had been removed as a result of a conspiracy hatched by the US.

The latest victim is Shahid Afridi, another popular cricketer who made the mistake of saying that the country needs to be united and both the government as well as the opposition have good and bad persons. He also made the mistake of imitating Imran Khan's habit of saying "I, I" all the time, as if he alone was running the country. This has incensed Imran Khan and his supporters, who have boycotted Afridi's restaurant and other businesses in Lahore. The poor guy had to apologize and say that he considers Imran Khan as his hero and mentor. But the damage has been done. 

Of course, it was only to be expected. People in Karachi would never have reacted so violently, but this happened in Lahore, where Imran Khan is regarded as a kind of prophet.

Suddenly Punjabi is being promoted by Maryam Nawaz, apparently to gain support from those who voted for Imran Khan recently. Imran Khan himself speaks Punjabi fluently, even though he is of Pashtun descent. He can't speak Pushto at all, but despite that he's very popular in KP (where "Punjabi" is often used as a word of abuse). In fact, those who speak Hindko (spoken in many parts of KP) are referred to as Punjabis by the Pahtuns

I've never been able to understand Punjabi. In Lahore, it's very difficult to converse with people who think they're speaking Urdu when in fact they are talking Punjabi. Lahoris are often amazed that there are people in the country who can't speak or understand Punjabi. 

To return to the teaching of Punjabi in schools, as proposed by Maryam Nawaz, I can't understand how that will help her party. It's well-known that Nawaz Sharif prefers to have Punjabi speakers only in his cabinet. But he did select a non-Punjabi (Musharraf) as Chief of Army, and we know how that turned out. The only Memon who served as Finance Minister was Miftah Ismail (my distant relative), but he didn't last long and was replaced by the Sharif's favorite (Ishaq Dar). In fact, Maryam Nawaz herself was instrumental in getting him ousted from the party. So, Punjabi is already the dominating language in the province (where Seraiki is spoken in the south). Giving too much importance to Punjabi might backfire. 

Most Pakistanis, even the ones with university degrees, are not really educated. They've never read a book after graduation, all their information is from what they hear in mosques and in religious matters, they are highly emotional. They're ready to kill anyone who tells them that something they've believed throughout their lives is not true.

Many years ago, a Memon woman (related to a niece of mine) was killed by her husband in the U.S. The couple had been operating an Islamic radio station and educating Muslims about things they didn't know. One day, they had an argument, so the man attacked her with an axe, chopping off her head. He was sentenced to a long prison term.

The other day, two girls studying in a madressah in KP were sentenced to death for killing their teacher. One of the two girls had dreamed that she would be granted a good place in heaven if she killed the teacher (who was supposed to have committed blasphemy in the dream). KP of course is the province where superstition reigns supreme. It's also the home province of Imran Khan, the man responsible for the mess the country is in today. 

Of course, in the rest of the country also the people are deeply superstitious, which is why such cases are common in Pakistan. It will be take many many years of real education before our people become liberal.



Crying foul

Monday, Mar 18, 2024

·         

·        After every election in the country, the losers always cry foul and refuse to accept that the elections were free and fair. However, as far as I can recall, never has a losing party appealed to foreigners to interfere in our internal affairs. Even in the aftermath of the extremely controversial 2018 elections, the losing parties tried not to damage Pakistan’s image abroad. But today, the party which indirectly got the largest number of appears to be doing its best to hurt the country. Its leader has asked the IMF to tie future economic aid to an audit of the 2024 election results. A few days ago, some of its supporters even staged a demonstration outside IMF headquarters in Washington DC, trying to undermine the mandate of the current government. What next? Why not ask the IMF or the World Bank to conduct fresh elections in the country?

 

Shakir Lakhani

Karachi

https://e.thenews.com.pk/detail?id=290583


 

Gifts for the people

March 16, 2024

Both the National Assembly and the Senate should immediately pass a resolution banning the purchase of Toshakhana items by lawmakers. These gifts should be auctioned off and the proceeds distributed among the poor.

Shakir Lakhani

Karachi

https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/1168541-gifts-for-the-people

There's a lot of talk about the recent elections being heavily rigged. One way of disproving this is to look at pre-election surveys done by Gallup.

According to an article in The News a couple of weeks back, the number of votes polled by the three political parties were exactly the same as predicted in the surveys. In Punjab, the survey had found the PML-N and the PTI almost equally popular (35% to 34%), and this turned out to be correct. In KP, the PTI got 45 percent of the popular vote, again as predicted in the survey. 

The conclusion is that if there was any rigging, it was very little. But try telling this to any PTI supporter and if you're lucky you won't be lynched. I'm surprised at how much support this party has among youngsters. Even more surprising is that among PTI voters the majority were educated people. It proves that the standard of education has deteriorated a lot.


ROWDY STUDENTS: The residents of Defence Housing Authority (DHA) phase VIII in Karachi woke up to loud noises on the morning of Feb 28. As they later came to know, the students of some so-called high-end academic institutions had decided to disturb the peace of the locality for reasons known only to them. The ruckus continued for a while. All exit and entry roads remained blocked, office-goers and ambulances remained stranded, and even aerial firing was resorted to. All this while, the police constable on duty just stood by. Why? We still do not know.

Shakir Lakhani

Karachi

March 11, 2024

https://www.dawn.com/news/1820681/rowdy-students

I've often wondered why people kill themselves. Years ago, the wife of a colleague of mine in the petroleum industry first threw her four daughters from the fifth floor, then jumped to her death. A psychiatrist had warned her husband not to make her pregnant again, as she had not been able to produce a male child. Her husband asked the mullah of the neighborhood mosque, who told him that all women want to get pregnant even if they already have ten children. The poor woman again gave birth to a female (her fifth child) and decided to end her life, as she couldn't bear the taunts of her in-laws who assumed that it was her fault for not producing a son.

Yesterday a 48-year old man whom my family had known since he was a child killed himself. No one knows why he did so. He had had stomach cancer some years back but had recovered after surgery. He may have been suffering from depression. His wife, who belonged to family friends of ours, didn't want to live in Karachi, as most of her cousins and aunts lived in Canada. He was a successful businessman, his father a billionaire, so it couldn't have been poverty that caused him to kill himself. But it was a senseless death all the same.