The sensible, the wishy-washy, and the questionable

By far the most sensible news to come our way last week was the September 2 report that the NWFP Chief Minister, young Amir Haidar Khan Hoti, has suggested that Ramazan and Eid-ul-Fitr timings be brought in line with those of Saudi Arabia, the custodian country of all that is held sacred by Muslims around the world. In the same vein, this should be extended to the Hajj celebrations which now make little sense as they do not coincide with the rituals taking place in Saudi Arabia. Were the entire Ummah to go along with this eminently practical and rational recommendation it would go a long way in promoting unity and a sense of belonging in the Muslim world. It is deserving of a hard think by the Islamic scholars of different lands. Another report that same day told us that the National Assembly's Standing Committee on Human Rights wishes the government to "re-examine" the blasphemy laws on our statute books and "improve its procedure." The committee needs to take thoroughly examine these laws which have been misused and have disturbed the country's communal harmony respectively. Questionable is the media mayhem with which we have of late been struck. None of it has simply come out of the blue. What has been resurrected and revealed has been at the instigation of those with a purpose - who 'they' may be and what may be the purpose so far no commentator has been able to tell us, or if one or more may be in the know they have bound themselves to secrecy. The gossip orgy started with the August 5 reports (many would call them 'plants') of present corruption in high places involving this government and the presidential cronies who have flooded back to the country under cover of the unconstitutional and unprincipled NRO. Pakistan International Airlines, Pakistan Steel, the Employees Old Age Benefit Institution, the Sui Southern Gas Company Limited, and the Ministry of Petroleum were all cited as being hotbeds of embezzlement and shady deals. Subsequently added were the rental power projects and the sugar mills scams as examples of the alleged corruption rampant in the ranks of the government of the PPP. That takes care of the present. Then we come to the distant past. Who resurrected and prompted the long retired Brigadier Imtiaz Billa Ahmed to approach the anchor of one of the most popular of the freed-by-Musharraf private channels in the second half of August? Who resurrected and prompted retired Lt General Naseer Akhtar to join him? Shortly after their revelations of 1992 happenings, another former Intelligence Bureau man crawled out of the woodwork, one Rana Abdul Baqi who split on his former IB colleague, Imtiaz Ahmed, to 'reveal,' or allege, to the press (August 28) a string of unintelligible accusations of murky doings in 1991 when Ahmed headed the IB. He was followed on TV on September 1 by another retired colleague, Brigadier Asif Haroon, who discoursed at length on the matter of the Jinnahpur maps and their alleged existence. The retired former ISI Lt General Hamid Gul set the trend for retired service personnel to fill in their retirement days by appearing on our television channels to regale us with accounts of their past brave deeds, always in the national interest. This encouraged many others, one being former ISI chief Lt General Asad Durrani, and now another retired Lt General Tariq Pervez has contributed his bit, as has the former chief of air staff, Kaleem Saadat. There are others who have disclosed much of what they know, or pretend to know, whether truthfully or untruthfully. Our television channels with their famous 'tawk', or gossip, shows have become tools in the hands of the unscrupulous who wish to use them to further various aims and ends, and they do so with impunity, quite possibly doing damage along the way, as is the case with some sectors of the press which are read with glee by the minority literate who wallow in stories of dirty doings by the temporary high and mighty. Altaf Hussain reacted immediately to the Ahmed-Akhtar resurrection of the 1992 Jinnahpur story. On August 23 from his headquarters in a north London suburb he 'appealed' to the Chief Justice of Pakistan - he wants him to form a truth and reconciliation commission. He, like all thinking along the same lines, must know that truth is a rare commodity in this country. There is no person who has held any political or establishment post who can afford to tell the truth - the truth will tarnish ever single present or past lead or support actor on the stage that is Pakistan. The writer is a freelance columnist E-mail: jilani.amina@gmail.com