Nawaz's monkeyshines

EDITORIAL:THE FRONTIER POST

Does Mian Nawaz Sharif think that the people are too stupid or that he is too clever that he can get away with all manner of hypocrisies and deceits just like that without his foul ever being called? But so mistaken is he. Not that the people know not that he is faking, deceiving and lying so much in these times. They do. But they let his chicanery pass as they have now wiped him out of their hearts and minds as a nonentity. Otherwise, does he know that the people sneer at him when he brags that then Balochistan chief minister Sardar Akhtar Mengal had supported him when the Pakistani nuclear scientists had conducted the May 1998 tests? The people know that he is lying, and blatantly. He indeed had kept Mengal out of the loop on the nuclear testing. And after it was conducted, Mengal had gone to the town whining that he was kept in the dark all through even as the nuclear testing was to be carried out on his domain at Chagai. This is very much a matter of public record. And yet Nawaz has the audacity to tell a lie with a straight face with no streak of qualm on his face. He says that Mengal and other Baloch leaders have been labelled as traitors whereas they are as patriotic Pakistanis as anyone else. Then, what was it that had impelled him not to take Mengal into confidence on the impending nuclear testing, which in fact had become a cause of discord between the two? And what kind of relationship it was that he himself engineered the toppling of Mengal's elected government in Balochistan and returned Mengal's loyalty with his own treachery? Of late, Nawaz has been feigning a lot of sympathy and compassion for Balochistan and its residents, oozing out volumes of wailing that they have been dealt injustices no end by the centre. He has been posing as if he was no part of problem, whereas he was very much of it. He had been the prime minister twice. And he says his was the "golden era". Did that glorious era touch Balochistan even a wee bit? You must be joking. The luckless province never ever blipped on his radar screen. He built a wholly unneeded motorway between Islamabad and Lahore. Which expressway did he build to connect Quetta with Karachi? He spruced up the Lahore airport terminal complex. Which airport he built in Balochistan or gave a facelift to? If he took to the patent rip-off of a yellow cab contrivance, did he think of helping Balochistan's fishermen community to modernise its obsolete fishing fleet? Which dam, which canal, which waterworks, which seaport indeed did he construct in the province? Which university, which higher engineering institute, which medical college, which hospital, which healthcare network did he establish in Balochistan? His slate is, verily, all blank. Then, does he think that the people are such fools that they are chewing up unquestioningly whatever he is dishing out to them? They are not, absolutely. They know what is eating him in reality and what is he aiming at actually. It is to get his bete noire Pervez Musharraf, for which he has primarily latched on to the sad demise of Nawab Akbar Bugti. Of course, he has to have a special infatuation as well for the late Baloch sardar. When possessed by a blinding craze to install himself on this nation as its lifelong Amirul Momineen, a ruler a law unto itself, and was desperately looking for the required parliamentary vote, he had self-servingly lent a big official hand to the late nawab sahib to throw out Kalpars who had earned the latter's ire for one reason or the other, from the Bugti domain. Several thousands of those Kalpars, including children and women, kept roaming around forlornly and haplessly as the internally displaced people all through Nawaz's watch with nobody to mitigate their woe. Certainly, Nawab Akbar Bugti's death must be investigated. And so must be the mass eviction of the Kalpars. No unnatural act should go uninvestigated and unpunished. But Nawaz must take a pause and ponder if he is not holding on to a dicey card. In any case, this country is no political play ground of anybody and its 180 million people are nobody's playthings. Nawaz must seek other avenues to take revenge and settle his personal scores with Musharraf. For his vengeance, he must not play with fire in Balochistan. The unfortunate province is already beleaguered with a multiplicity of dire adversities and miseries. And it would do without Nawaz's dangerously dirty monkeyshines.