Najam Sethi's E d i t o r i a l (Friday Times)
| A pretty good summary, I think. Perv, with his trademark combination of pragmatism and duplicity, tries to keep Pakistan from ending up floating in the soup. The MMA wants to build a diving board. |
General Pervez Musharraf has gone hoarse exhorting Pakistanis to be "moderate" and "enlightened". He has trooped all over the country pleading for a "soft image" of Pakistan.  He has posed with Grand Prix racing car drivers, jogged with Marathon runners, mingled with glitterati at fashion shows, sported well cut western suits, chomped Havana cigars in bush shirts, rubbed shoulders with music bands like Junoon, and so on, with one aim in mind: to show the rest of the world that we're "regular" guys doing all the moderate things that normal people do in this day and age and not the fiery, fanatical, bearded, blood curdling terrorists and jihadis that we are made out to be by the western media.
| Where, oh where, would the Western media get that picture? Other than from the Pak media and occasional eyeball observation. No doubt Daniel Pearl, if he was still alive, would be happy to pitch in to clear up the misunderstanding. |
Alas. In the last few months, we can point to at least four cases in which the leaders of the Pakistan Muslim League have consciously obfuscated, abandoned or negated the very principles of enlightened moderation espoused by General Musharraf.
| Not a low dive, mind you. Not a medium-height diving platform. A high dive, with a springboard, nothing else will do... |
One example of mealy mouthed obfuscation and contradiction in government was demonstrated by the issue of the "religion-column" in the proposed new machine readable passports. The federal interior minister, Aftab Sherpao, and the religious affairs minister, Ijaz ul Haq, remained at loggerheads. Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, the PML president, was loath to abandon his pro-MMA instincts. The issue required one firm policy statement from the very top but none was forthcoming. Meanwhile, the foreign media went to town and ridiculed Pakistan.
| Actually, I haven't seen that much in the foreign press on the subject, except here at Rantburg. That could be because the issue's so stoopid that the foreign writers feel like they must be missing something... |
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