Shabaz Sharif VS Poor

EDITORIAL:Shahbaz’s acrobatics

One is amazed at the straight face with which Shahbaz Sharif strikes postures of saintliness and piety when this posturing of this chief minister of Punjab is so obviously deceitful and funny. He laments that the system did not support at all Mohsin Ali who has secured the top position in the BA examination. Yes, it did not, for which Shahbaz himself is no lesser responsible. Mohsin was kneading dough and baking loaves in the oven while Shahbaz was feeding sasti roti to the well-off ostentatiously. Mohsin was struggling to find a corner in the single-room home housing 11 family members to study and prepare for examinations while Shahbaz was doling out showily houses and plots in the state-funded housing estates. Mohsin was studying in streetlights at nights as Shahbaz was distributing laptops to fatten his vote-bank. In none of his populist schemes and ploys did Mohsin have a place. He was left out to fend for himself. And yet Shahbaz has the gall to pretend as if he is no part of the iniquitous system that favours and pampers the elite and degrades and decimates the hoi polloi. He is very much part of it and for pretty long. He blares that politicians, bureaucrats and judiciary are responsible for the country’s worsening condition. But when was it when he was not a member of this select atrocious club? For years, he has been there in politics. He has also been in governments. Then shouldn’t he share the blame in equal measure for bringing this unfortunate country to such a sorry pass? Yet he seems flaunting his own innocence. Indeed, when his elder sibling Mian Nawaz Sharif first rode to the prime minister’s house in Islamabad in an admittedly engineered election, Shahbaz donned the mantle of a prince regent, earning him the sobriquet of Robert Kennedy. Like younger Kennedy, Shahbaz too had had an incisive intrusive role in the administration of his elder brother without being accountable for his acts. During the second prime ministerial stint of Nawaz, Shahbaz landed the plum job of the chief minister of the country’s most populous province, Punjab, that he ruled autocratically. And now for more than four years he has been holding the Lahore fort, distinguishing himself for blowing away recklessly the precious taxpayer’s money on enterprises of pork barrel and populism to advance his political objectives at the public expense. Then with what face can he flaunt the mean skullduggery of being no part of the crises that he says the politicians, bureaucrats and judiciary have together brought about? He must come clean, confess his sins and apologise. He may have now doled out some money to Mohsin. He may have even granted Mohsin’s family a home in a government housing society. But that is not enough to atone for his sins that are too big. Does he have even a foggiest idea how many Mohsins in Punjab are being smothered by the cruel state-run schooling system that he has left to rot? Does he feel no compunction in his conscience over the doleful fact that on his watch government schools are functioning even in graveyards in Punjab? Does no concern prick his heart that there are hundreds of state-run schools on his domain that are running in dilapidated buildings posing a serious danger to the lives of their students? With a hugely money-driven media management, he may have mustered up laudatory notes for his intellectually bankrupt daanish schools venture. But does he know how much of budding talent has he ruined and ransacked by ignoring and neglecting the state-run schooling as well as college education in his domain? When indeed will he come to admit that there are thousands and thousands of Mohsins wandering forlornly in Punjab with no hope in heart and no prospects in sight under the very nose of this Khadam-e-Punjab? When in fact will he come to confess that he is no different from the political chicaners and operators strutting on the national landscape wearing the masks of political leaders? With his posturing, he may be beguiling the fondling commentariat, the chattering classes and the trading community for their vested interests. But the common citizenry has long thrown him out of its good graces. The street holds him the part of the league that he himself says has reduced this nation into an utterly pathetic state with its great betrayal of the masses.