PARTLY FACETIOUS: ‘The man with no portfolio’

“I am not a lawyer but…”

“Oh dear!”

“What?”

“When anyone starts a sentence by saying I am not of a profession then they proceed to make an uninformed statement with respect to that profession.”

“Ha ha, I was going to do precisely that and I will but before I do I would like to bring it to your notice that in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan there is a tendency to begin a sentence by I am a student of say political science and then proceed to make an observation against all possible academic theories on the subject and…”

“They base it on their own experience, long and undistinguished but long. Take Sheikh Rashid, with a life time dependency on others for a federal ministry…”

“Indeed but as a student of politics he has made the right choice more than ten times by identifying the man most likely to be the chief executive…”

“Right what about the Man With No Portfolio?”

“He has placed all his eggs in London/Raiwind and…”

“Let’s see what happens to him ….Before I forget let me bring to your notice that in June this year after a three-month inquiry by All Parliamentary Group on Democracy and the Constitution, which heard evidence from former senior government lawyers and reviewed hundreds of pages of Supreme Court judgements, academic commentary and public statements by ministers the conclusion was that ministers were acting in an ‘unconstitutionally unhelpful and inappropriate’ manner which may ‘have created the impression that the Supreme Court has been influenced by ministerial pressure.’

“I never ever heard of such a…”

“This was in the UK and the report published in June of this year….and before we move on the report also found and I quote the high number of instances in which the Supreme Court has reversed its previous position on the law, so as to adopt an approach that is more favourable to the executive is notable.’

“Interesting but in this land of the pure no such report is possible and…”

“As I began by saying I am not a lawyer but I would like to make two observations. First that threatening or indeed inadvertently or advertently riling one’s supporters that may lead them to harm anyone, be it a member of the judiciary or not, should allow the one threatened to register a civil lawsuit with appropriate security by the state and penalties.”

“Right and let me add that in the US threatening someone with a law suit is considered a sort of extortion…”

“Right and second I would remind The Khan that all the selections he made during his tenure as the prime minister were not satisfactory, he appointed four finance ministers, I can’t even begin to count the number of times he changed senior bureaucrats and don’t forget the Chief Election Commissioner… while the Sharif/Zardari selection of Chairman National Accountability Bureau delivered to him as none of his own appointees did…”

“The Buzz remained…”

“While an earthquake destroyed all those around him every three or four months…”

“Indeed.”

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022