Rankings and wranglings

Faisal Vawda and Murad Saeed. Please put your hands together to welcome these two stars of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) onto the media stage this week. Both have figured in the news, though they are cast in very different roles. Somehow, the antihero who plays a villainous part has a more enticing story to tell. And there will be a lot more action in this political theatre of the absurd.

On Wednesday, the Election Commission of Pakistan disqualified PTI Senator Faisal Vawda for giving a false affidavit while submitting his nomination papers for the 2018 elections, as a candidate of the National Assembly. He had concealed his dual citizenship. Following the judgment, the ECP has denotified him as a senator.

On Thursday, the prime minister awarded certificates to the heads of top 10 best performing ministries and divisions. It was certainly an unusual and innovative exercise. On top of the list was the Ministry of Communications, headed by Murad Saeed. Imran Khan, obviously pleased by the rankings, said: “Murad, who is the youngest minister, gave the best performance”.

This spectacle of measuring the performance of the federal ministers, advisers and special assistants of the prime minister, irrespective of the principles and standards that were applied, was bound to become controversial. Not surprisingly, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi was the first one to formally question the criteria that had put his ministry at number 11.

At one level, it raises questions about the prime minister’s sense of judgement and prudence as a leader. The paradox that some members of a cabinet that is seen to have underperformed have been applauded for their performance was underlined by Imran Khan himself when, at the ceremony for the awards, he admitted that he could not bring the “change” he had promised because of “faults” in the system.

Besides, it would obviously be out of place for the young and inexperienced Murad Saeed to get the top position in an unusually large cabinet of political heavyweights and seasoned warriors. Shah Mahmood Qureshi, for instance, fancies himself as prime ministerial material – and has meticulously worked at it for so many years. There are others, such as Fawad Chaudhry, who have not even made it to the top ten.

Yes, most of the old warriors in Imran Khan’s present team have had their grooming in other parties and they are professional players in the game of power. Sheikh Rashid even boasts about the number of times he has been a federal minister, which is a confession that he has changed his loyalties a number of times.

Vawda and Murad are blue-blooded Insafians or, more appropriately, Imranians. Both of them have been close to Imran Khan and have distinguished themselves as more stringent and passionate campaigners for the cause. They share Imran Khan’s obsession with the Sharifs, something that has distracted the government’s attention from its designated task of governing the country.

We are witnessing a renewed surge in the PTI’s attack on the opposition and at this time, their target is Shehbaz Sharif. Whatever the occasion, Imran Khan dutifully lapses into a tirade against the corruption of the previous rulers. One may say that this has become the PTI’s ‘single national curriculum’.

Murad Saeed’s triumph in the competition for competence among the members of Imran Khan’s cabinet has come at a time when the PTI is under pressure and there are indications that the winds are beginning to blow in the other direction. Has Imran Khan unwittingly provided an incentive for more disaffection within the party with his skewed ministerial rankings? Some observers have even argued that the ECP decision against Faisal Vawda is also a sign of the emerging environmental shift in the political sphere.

It is a fact that the ECP took 22 months in disqualifying Vawda, after this newspaper’s Fakhar Durrani had broken his dual nationality story. In any case, the former MNA and a federal minister is no longer a member of the Senate and may be expected to withdraw into the background.

But he is not a man to be easily removed from the political arena. He has been more flamboyant and brazen in his behaviour than Murad. In that sense, he is a superior exponent of the party’s spirit with close access to Imran Khan. That is why he could get away with such blatant indiscretions.

In the first place, everyone knew that he had submitted a false affidavit, which plainly means that he had lied. This would be an act of perjury, a serious offence. But Imran Khan, with all his protestations of merit and honesty, still got him elected to the Senate. The only explanation is that he is someone special in the party.

Out of the ordinary he surely is. He would unashamedly flaunt his wealth, his luxury cars and his arrogant showmanship. He arrived in a commando outfit when there was a terror attack in Karachi, a handgun protruding out of his hip pocket.

Some of the views he expressed with gusto were rather incomprehensible. For instance, he had argued that if five thousand persons were hanged in public, the country would be set on the right path. He improved on this prescription in a speech in, yes, the National Assembly. He said that those five thousand should first be dragged on the streets before being executed.

There was also that very dramatic performance in a live talk show when he put a military boot on the table. I can recall some of his other exploits in talk shows but I think that we should still have our Faisal Vawdas and our Murad Saeeds and others like them on the political stage.

After all, we do need some respite from the pain and anguish that we suffer in these troubled times. When we look away from politics, what we find is unbearable.

The writer is a senior journalist. He can be reached at: ghazi_salahuddin@

hotmail.com