As the self-destructiveness of the government plays itself out, I am taken aback at the government's handling of the present standoff between itself and the press. I am amazed at the absurd aggressiveness of the government specially when it has no legs to stand on, other than the 'massive mandate' it says it got at the most recent election, and which has come to such little good already, as we have seen. I am absolutely floored by the impeccable gall with which the government's functionaries have gone throwing their weight about.

I am astonished at the way in which the government has insisted it is right in this, it's quite foolish quest to bludgeon the press into submission. No stone has been left unturned; Senator Saifur Rehman has even gone so far as to insist in a tape-recorded conversation that not only were all self-made businesses suspect, he was only doing Mr Nawaz Sharif's bidding! As if that was not enough, Mr Mushahid Hussain out did him by going back twenty-some years trying to prove a silly point.

As children we were told that self-made people were to be admired and respected and looked up to. We were told that people who had worked hard and had made successes of their lives should be emulated and their example followed.

I was taken aback then, when I read in the press only the other day that Senator Saifur Rehman, the Ehtesab head honcho, had said that he was after the Jang Group of newspapers only because it was obvious the Jang Group were up to no good, becoming so wealthy even though the Mirs came from very humble beginnings.

Hello, I said to myself, hello. What in the world did the Senator mean? Was he by any means saying that all the super rich that we see flaunting their wealth in this country are tax thieves, for example? Or that all self-made people were corks? Or that all those whose origins were 'humble' but who had now made good were stealing the country's money? Was he including his own family in that list? For we do know that whilst Mir Shakil-ur-Rehman's father, Mir Khalil-ur-Rehman had himself built his newspapers to be the largest in the country by far during his own lifetime, adding foreign publications to his empire too, Mr Saifur Rehman's father was only a very basic medical store owner until the son made good in Oman and Dubai, Patriata and Murree; very, very good, at that. Was he indeed including Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, the Interior Minister in this list? Whose father started off as a head constable of police and then went on to head the Punjab Co-operative Bank and other sundry businesses? Or, and indeed, Mr Nawaz Sharif whose father was himself beating iron by his own hand when Pakistan came into existence, and was now the head of the largest industrial and business empire in the country? What in the world did the good senator mean by this statement, I thought to myself?

If all self-made people were crooked, why had his Ehtesab eye only, lighted on the Jang Group? Had he, for example, considering he would not look at his own family's many millions, taken a hard look at the Chaudhry's fabled zillions, or and indeed, at the serious riches of the former generals who ran the Afghan jehad for the Americans? Why was the senator only looking at the Jang Group?

The answer was soon forthcoming _ the tape-recordings of his conversations with the CEO of the Jang Group were public knowledge by then. Senator Saif was heard loud and clean, demanding the dismissed of certain journalists, the printing of some stores and the blacking out of others; threats of brimstone and hellfire and all, if the newspaper did not acquiesce.

Alarmingly he was heard to say that if only he knew, judicial officers, even their fathers, would not have dared give relief to his adversary. Which, also, amazed me. What had the fathers of the judicial officers (many of them deceased, no doubt) to do with the actions of their sons? Was the arrogance of the present 'heavy mandate' now so gargantuan than even deceased fathers were now not to be spared because their sons had dared to annoy the powerful senator and his friends?
But, his insistence that he was only doing what he was because of Mr Nawaz Sharif's express wishes was the most astonishing. Please know that whilst I was myself much pleased that what I had been saying all these years that Mr Nawaz Sharif has been in power had come true. Through the tongue of his own best friend and buddy, mark, I was nonetheless most intrigued as to how Senator Saif could have had the gall to say it out so loud.

Even though I had very often said in the printed world that Mr Nawaz Sharif was a hard, hard boy, who would stoop as low he had to, to get ahead many of my friends said he was not a bad sort. That whilst not overburdened with .brains he was trying to the good. And he talked well as a human being.

I never agreed with that, ever, and as an example of the man's character I would recount the time when as Chief Minister of the Punjab, he went against his party leader, Mr Mohammad Khan Junejo at the behest of General Zia, soon after Mr Junejo's government was dismissed in 1988. Mr Nawaz Sharif had the poor man attacked with knives and forks and spoons and chairs in the then Islamabad Hotel during a Muslim League meeting (poor Mr Junejo was the president of the Muslim League at the time, please note). This attack was carried out by goons imported from (a la the Supreme Court storming many years later, remember?). When Mr Junejo embarked on a tour of the Punjab the very next day, he was attacked at his first engagement in Sargodha with sticks and stones; his car's window screen was smashed and he himself was hit over the head with a danda.

Mr Junejo then president that he was, gave upon being president of the Muslim League and went back to Sindhri, never to emerge politically again, and died of a broken heart soon after. Mr Nawaz Sharif then ascended the throne of the Muslim League with Zia's blessings, and there he sits to date.

This anecdote should well explain where Mr Nawaz Sharif comes from, and how he ticks. The fact that he told Senator Saif how to deal with the Jang Group surprises me not at all.

And now for Mr Mushahid Hussain. He too had gone gall. This time to refer to Mr Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as the 'Teddy Boy' who ditched Ayub Khan. This is truly stupendous. Can one even begin to imagine someone like Mushahid Hussain referring to someone like Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as a 'Teddy Boy'? This government has truly lost it's marbles.

(The News 27.1.99)

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