The PTI’s Naeemul Haque was a fixture on TV talk shows, putting across the party’s point of view. He seems not just loyal to party chief Imran Khan, but a careful imitator. Remember his role in the Ayesha Gulalai episode? After Imran had allegedly sent her objectionable texts, he had proposed to her. Is that why she went public? Texts from Imran is one thing, have Naeemul Haque propose marriage is another. It comes under the rubric of carrying the joke too far.
Well, Privatisation Minister Daniyal Aziz did not see any of that lover-boy image in a recent talk show, where Naeem slapped him. Again, Naeem seems to be taking a leaf from Imran’s book. Imran had slapped a pressman many years ago, after he won the World Cup, before he had built the cancer hospital, and before he had entered politics. Of course, Naeem would argue that slapping a reporter outweighs slapping a federal minister, but that’s perhaps because he doesn’t want to appear to have outdone his chief.
Imran is wondering whether he has the right skill set for politics. He’s a cricketer, not an all-in wrestler. However, while he has unveiled his plan for his first 100 days in office, he hasn’t disclosed whether or not he’s taking boxing lessons. So far, he hasn’t issued any instructions to party members about how to tackle the PML-N if they begin to start calling names. Naeem should remember that his chief, apart from that one episode with the reporter, only bowled bouncers. Those were pretty effective, though Imran never came even close to killing anybody.
If the PTI comes to office, and ‘Fists of Fury’ Naeemul Haque is included in the administration, everyone had better watch out. Anyone saying that Muhammad Ali or Mike Tyson was a better boxer, could get slapped. Target: no opposition in 100 days. I wonder if his display of mastery over the fistic arts was behind Fauzia Kasuri’s departure from the party. Her departure is more commonly attributed to disgust over the influx of electables. They are flowing into the party to the extent that there is even some talk of the powers-that-be deciding to have somebody else become PM. The penny seems to have dropped, and his most enthusiastic backers seem to have realised that Imran is not exactly fit to be PM. Nor was Mian Nawaz Sharif, and look how big a bone he has become in the same people’s throat! Now who is that somebody? The more conservative would prefer Shah Mahmood Qureshi, but why not Naeemul Haque? Imagine letting him loose to negotiate with Narendra Modi.
The place Imran got the 100 Days idea from isn’t doing too well either. The phrase was used to designate the beginning of a government by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his 1936 campaign for re-election, to describe what he had done at the beginning of his Administration in 1932. It became a popular tool, and was used to examine the beginning of each elected government. And even Roosevelt had borrowed the phrase from Napoleon’s history, with ‘100 days’ used to describe the period between Napoleon's return from exile on the island of Elba to Paris on 20 March 1815 and the second restoration of King Louis XVIII on 8 July 1815, actually a period of 110 days. So if the PTI forms the government, and if it insists that its 100 days are actually 110, agree (especially if Naeemul Haque is doing the insisting).
I suspect that Imran doesn’t take the 100 Days thing too seriously. Or else he would have included a promise to raid Mian Nawaz Sharif’s Raiwind residence and make the sort of recoveries the Malaysian police are making at flats connected to defeated PM Najib Razak: handbags, watches and currency notes ($127 million worth), Imran has so far not even said he would raid their house, even though he should. Or is he keeping the raids for the second 100 days?
Anyway, in the land of FDR, not all is well. The Kim-Trump Summit, not so much as between the leaders of the USA and North Korea as between the planet’s two worst haircuts, is off. As Israel doesn’t have any apparent interest, I don’t think Trump will move. He’s probably too busy ensuring that Muslim prison inmates in Alaska keep on being given pork for iftari. Of course, not all Muslim inmates are there for crimes against Americans (whites). Look at Amir, now busy bowling against England, who has done time in the UK for match-fixing. Still, first fasting and then getting pork to break the fast… An Irish thing to do, apart from the Irish voting in a referendum to allow abortion. Too late as usual. For the Irish Test team had gone down to a huge loss in their inaugural Test.
Or else, Trump is busy with his friends in India, who must be scratching their heads over the strange case in UP, when a sleeping mother was first bitten by a snake, and then breastfed her child on awaking. Both mother and child died. Mother love is supposed to be sacred and axiomatic, but there is an example of the opposite.
Actually, India should be looking harder at former RAW chief A.S. Dulat, who co-authored a book with former ISI DG Lt Gen (retd) Asad Durrani, who has been summoned to GHQ to explain his position. Can a lieutenant-general be a security risk? If so, who made him DG ISI? The COAS of the time. Another security risk? Heads must roll. Another test for Imran. His faith in the military may survive, but it’s surely shaken.