Spotlight: A journey into the minds of our greats!Don't believe every word of it!: A penny for your thoughts! (Part One)

"A penny for your thoughts" is what we say according to the English idiom, when we find someone lost in deep thought and wish to know what that someone was thinking. Our leaders, however, will not divulge their innermost thoughts for a penny. A huge cache of pennies would be more like it! Not having that kind of money, we are reduced to a guessing game, which is free. And the result is as follows but (as we have already said) do not believe all of it!
Guess Who-1? I must somehow see off the money-washing allegations. I must survive! Nothing else matters. I have managed pretty well so far. With the likes of our Security Man and the "Doctor" (that is a good one!) and the ex-AG around me, I have no fear of a double-cross from the inner circle. With someone very close to a faithful crony, running the show in our own House of Commons and an ambition-free old faithful perched atop our own House of Lords, my flanks are fully protected.
Look at the garden path I led the country's Umpires along for a good part of a year, while professing to obey their orders in letter and spirit. I am particularly good at that sort of thing as my chief opposition politician will confirm. Procrastination some call it. It is my specialty. I am a firm believer in the fact that if you let problems lie long enough they evaporate into nothing, more often than not! There can be some troublesome excretions though. The brass could be a problem, but so far I have managed to keep on their right side - well, almost! Now and then my close associate in the government, chosen by me to run the show, starts getting too big for his boots, though. But through some clever choreography I think I finally have him where I want him: eating out of my hand.
Fortunately, he is good at digging his own grave and makes mistakes when he tries to show his independence. Thanks to the famous amendment (under perpetual discussion by the Umpires, by the way) he gets the blame for every executive misadventure, which gives me breathing space. I would not like to be in his shoes for a Billion Dollars - well, on second thoughts make it Half a Billion (in cash or bearer bonds)!
That should suffice! As for my so-called chief antagonist, the aspirant for the top slot, he is no problem. For one thing he is so preoccupied with his London-based business empire that he has no time to notice (before it is too late) the banana peels I manage to place in his path. For another, he is one of the easiest political leaders to maneuver around.
Yet another good thing about him is that he is always agreeable to let bygones be bygones - ever ready to turn a new page and get outmaneuvered again. I wish there were more like him in our politics. I wish our Kashmir Committee Man were as easy to handle, though. Now there is a clever guy! He always manages to get more out of me than he ever gives back. Fortunately, background wise his range is strictly limited.
Guess Who-2? Of all the people, it was the visiting beauty queen (considered by many to be among the world's most attractive women) who was the one to say that I could have an opening in Hollywood. Phew!!! Fortunately she also said in the same breath, God bless her for that, that I was doing an even better job as the Chief Exec. That was the saving grace! (How little she knows about these things)! Even otherwise, there is no shortage of people who would poke fun at me at the slightest pretext and on the flimsiest of excuses.
In the current scenario many must be itching to quip: "that is a great idea" (my becoming a Hollywood Icon, in case you didn't get it)! I would not pretend to say that I was not pleased with the idea myself! I was even tempted!!!
Here was an opportunity to act the handsome hero and get paid colossal sums not to speak of being on the receiving end of adulation of countless millions who would pay their dollars and euros to see me act in a romantic duo - possibly with the very same "Angel" who started it all.
What an escape that would be from the tight rope walk between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (I am just using English idiom, not meaning any one in particular), between keeping my boss happy and keeping people's hands off my throat - people who are not happy at my keeping my boss happy by doing his bidding come what may, often against my own better judgement. Keep your options open beautiful visitor (what a sweet mouthful of a name she carries) on a humanitarian cause! You never know when I might suddenly say: "Tweedle Dum, Here I Come"!
Guess Who-3? I could show a thing or two to these poor Pakistani politicians! What a naïve lot? My political career is an object lesson in hunting with the hounds and running with the hares. It will take a very competent writer to do justice to my biography when it is written, perhaps under the title: Machiavelli in Pakistan.
However, it is yet too early for that as my career continues to develop in so many ways and in so many directions. Some five years ago, you will recall, I got together with the simpletons of the Mansoorah and had my Chief Minister installed in the border province. I forgot to break with the self-appointed King when he reneged on his promise to my coalition to resign by the end of the year in return for its support. I always know which side my bread is buttered!
Again when the King was to be elected by voting in the assemblies my colleagues in the coalition wanted to dissolve the assembly under my Chief Minister so that an across-the-board mandate for the King, with all provincial assemblies voting, would not be possible.
When I finally got my Chief Minister and his government to resign, I was rewarded with a thunderous applause from opposition parties including my coalition colleagues, the gullible fools! The simpletons did not realise at the time that I had delayed the resignation to a calculated point in time at which the King's party could move a no-confidence motion against the provincial government and the mandatory debate period could delay the dissolution of the Assembly to beyond the King's scheduled election date. And that is what happened.
So I made my coalition happy at the start and the King at the end of the maneuver! That was one of my biggest, slickest triumphs. Very recently, I turned my recent impasse at Dubai on my way to America into a virtue by claiming that I was cancelling my visit as a protest against the sentence handed down to Aafia Siddiqui! Will another like me ever grace Pakistan's political firmament! Hold your breath. There is much more to come before I am done!
Guess Who-4? So what if I am abroad most of the time, since the attack on my Dera in the border province? In these days of easy and instant communication, why cannot politics be conducted from a (safe) distance? After all distance learning and distance fighting (a la distance killing by American Drones), have been accepted as normal. If American army men sitting 12,000 mile across the globe can direct their deadly fire on homes in Afghan countryside, why cannot I do politics and give directions to my party (and the Province they govern) from the Oily City just two thousand miles away?
Also, why offer yourself as a sitting duck to terrorists? The deadly attack I was subjected to at my Dera last year is a case in point. More recently my sister, a practising Doctor, was attacked and injured in a border City. Why not defeat the terrorists by remaining comfortably out of their reach. Look how Altaf Bhai has been calling all the shots in Karachi from the comfort and safety of one or the other of his London homes for some decades now!
In fact we could even consider moving the Provincial and Federal Governments to the Oily City as well! In order to govern a restive country we leaders need peace of mind and tension-free living! I think the Chief in Islamabad would particularly endorse the idea. Also, don't we deserve some diversion and relaxation from the cares of the state?
(To be concluded)
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