|
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Anjum Niaz
The writer is a freelance journalist with over twenty years of experience in
national and international reporting.
All work and no play makes Gilani
a dull PM. And so, Information Minister Sherry Rehman
ensures that her boss gets ample entertainment to keep his grey cells buzzing
and his heart ticking. She doesn't have to work too hard at this because the
PM already has a healthy proclivity for the arts, beauty and dazzle. In his
interview with the lovely anchor, a doctor by profession, he shared his most
private thoughts. The anchor has since been offered a lucrative job at the
state-owned PTV.
Last week Syed Yousuf Raza
Gilani sat through the whole screening of "Ramchand Pakistani" at the National
Art Gallery
in Islamabad.
To be fair to him, the movie was so gripping and at times so moving that none
of us would have wanted to leave it in the middle. Javed
Jabbar as the producer and daughter Mehreen Jabbar as the director
pulled off a blockbuster. It was midnight when the caged audience was finally
released after hearing long speeches by the PM and Ms Rehman
on what a wonderful job the PPP was doing. Frankly, after sitting straight
through an almost two-hour-tearjerker, we didn't have much of an appetite to
appreciate how great the present government is.
And there was he again on Saturday night. This time Gilani
beat the midnight hour by addressing the nation on television around 11 pm.
The show hit many glitches making it resemble "Saturday Night
Live," a long-running late-night comedy show that airs in America.
A stiff and wooden Gilani seated against a dirty
blue backdrop with his head cranked up a notch or two began parroting PPP
rhetoric rolled by the teleprompter in front. Some minutes down the road, the
teleprompter conked out. The TV channels airing the address promptly
re-routed the viewers back to whatever drivel they were watching before Gilani entered the airwaves. Back again after a few
minutes, our prime minister took up from where he left off. But this time he
had to read from the paper in front of him. So instead of popping his head
up, now he had to pop his head down.
Whoever is responsible for turning the prime minister's maiden address into a
comedy show should be sacked pronto. (One hears that PTV DMD Shahid Nadeem has already been made a scapegoat for this and has
been sacked).
Appointing the right people for the job is the first obligation of any
self-respecting government. One had hoped that the PPP had learnt from its
past mistakes and would be wary of appointing 'charlies'
who don't merit the positions. But in the first week of coming to power, Asif
Zardari, drunk with people's power and undeserved
greatness thrust upon him, doled out positions of power to guys with a seedy
past. No resumes were scanned; no background checks made; no interviews
conducted; no questions asked.
With the spoil system up and running, with favourtism,
nepotism and cronyism alive and kicking, the scramble for jobs continues.
Asif Zardari's frequent absences abroad appear
ill-timed. The catfights have begun. Women who didn't make it to the cabinet
in the first round are pitched in the opposite camp against Sherry Rehman. As minister for information, Sherry is pulling
all the strings that she humanely can. She's smart, capable and intelligent.
Still, she has the thankless task of reinventing her ministry stuffed with
fossilized human material which deserves to be dumped and replaced by new
blood. She has to tread carefully without making too many enemies. A
whispering campaign against her is already in progress. Meanwhile the PTV
with its newly inducted head has put in place its own roadmap. To begin with,
big boss Dr Shahid Masood (come back, we miss you
on Geo) has decided to clean the proverbial Augean stables by inviting a team
of "gora" investigators to nail those who
have stolen millions during the past government. Pious beginnings, indeed.
But the good doctor is getting bogged down playing James Bond instead of
fixing the malaise that is crying out for surgery. Other than hiring people
and offering them princely salaries, PTV has failed to make any waves. Nobody
watches it.
Another new inductee on the information scene has directed the folks in the
ministry to take direct orders from him. The press secretary to the PM has
crowned himself the boss. "I am your boss," he told the Press
Information Department guys recently. The hapless officers are in a quandary
– who should they report to – Sherry Rehman or Zahid Bashir?
Zahid Bashir was in the
past running M/s Budget Communications (Pvt) Ltd
and was allegedly distributing Indian channels to cable operators without
obtaining a licence from the Pakistan Electronic
Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA.) In 2006, PEMRA raided the Lahore-based
outfit of Zahid Bashir
and seized the "distribution equipment being sold for illegal
distribution of channels". Prior to this, it wrote his company a letter,
dated July 26, 2006, in which it issued a warning that various sections of
the PEMRA Ordinance of 2002 were being violated, especially those that
related to the illegal relay of proscribed channels without a licence. ZB duly filed a petition in the Lahore High
Court which ruled in his favour – on December 27,
2006, his company wrote to PEMRA's regional GM in Lahore asking that all
seized equipment be returned. Case closed. The truth, as they say, is never
known.
He was a tireless worker and ran the election campaigns of sons of the powerful.
While the son of Jehangir Badar
could not win despite ZB's best attempts, the PM's
son made it to a provincial seat. Naturally, PM Gilani
thinks the world of ZB's talents and guess what? Not only did he hire him, but he lets him sit
in on all the sensitive meetings and top-secret briefings! Far better it
would be for the press secretary to bolster his boss's faltering standing in
the media rather than listening in to all the state secrets, meant only for
the eyes and ears of a select few.
And this brings me back to the "Saturday Night Live" that turned
into a disaster because someone somewhere bungled up badly. Should the blame
be shared between the minister of information, the press secretary and the
PTV boss? If not, then probably the government is already scapegoating
some lowly technician at PTV.
Recently, an able and honest head of OGDC was given the marching orders by
the PM. What was Arshad Nasar's
crime? An OGDC insider was heard saying that a certain VVIP had asked Nasar to extend the deadline for opening of bids for a
multi-million-dollar project. "There was some influential guy who wanted
the project. Naser got a call from a high-up
demanding that Nasar entertain the influential
person's bid. 'I don't take verbal orders, give it to me in writing,' Nasar is meant to have told the high-up at the other end.
'We always give verbal orders, never written,' said the high up in a
threatening tone. 'You better do what you're told otherwise you'll be shown
the door.' Nasar stood his ground. Two hours later,
a letter arrived from the PM House, ordering OGDC to extend the deadline for
opening of bids and sacking Nasar!"
And by the way, while PM Gilani is distributing his
largesse right, left and centre, he has by a stroke of his pen given a double
promotion to his very own Principal Secretary Siraj
Shamsuddin (SS) in a matter of two months!
Dismissed from service when BB's last government
fell, Mr & Mrs Shamsuddin moved to London
where both eked out a living as teachers. With the return of PPP-Z, that's
the new name given to Zardari-led PPP, Shamsuddin who had been out of service for full ten years
became the principal secretary, a post always held by a grade 22 officer. The
path for this dismissed grade 20 officer was cleared by Gilani
himself (at boss Zardari's behest) and readily
okayed by time servers like General (retd) Shahid
Hamid, chairman of the Public Service Commission and the Establishment
secretary. The two gents put their jobs before principles. Obviously, they
didn't want to be booted out like Arshad Naser.
|