Owais Mughal

Here is how you complain about your telephone not working, Lahori style!

The banner in the picture reads:

We have been trying to get out PTCL number 042-6371795 fixed for the last six weeks, but without any success!

It is not clear whether putting up a banner to register your telephone complaint worked or not. But one can only imagine how desperate this person had to be that he resorted such extreme measures of spending money on the printing of this banner and then hoisting it on a busy city road. Or, maybe, he is just trying to make light of what has to be a really frustrating situation. As they say, “Lahore, Lahore hai!”

Photo Credits: Rana Imran for Associated Press of Pakistan; photo taken in Lahore on October 29, 2008.

Adil Najam

In writing about the controversy of Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar’s daughter’s F.Sc. marks being jacked up I had mused that “neither 640 nor 661 marks in F.Sc. gets you into a medical college, at least not on merit.” It seems that I was wrong. It does. And in the case of Farah Hameed Dogar, daughter of Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar, it did!

Not on merit, of course. But who cares for merit when judges have a “special quota.” Someone, please tell me why judges need a quota on medical college seats!

Adil Najam

Today’s issue of The News has an extraordinary story written by the country’s leading investigative reporter Ansar Abassi that claims that the daughter of the sitting Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar has been unfairly granted extra marks in her intermediate (F.Sc.) examinations through an illegal grading process. Enough extra marks to make her eligible for admission into a medical college.

I must say I am stumped by the story. There are few things that anger me more than blatant abuse of the education system. But there are also some aspects of the story that leave me wondering (if you are going to use corrupt means to get extra marks, why restrict it to just 21 marks? And, unless things have changed dramatically, neither 640 nor 661 marks in F.Sc. gets you into a medical college, at least not on merit). But, clearly, the story is something that Ansar Abassi has researched and The News is putting its reputation on the line for.

I may not even have posted the story had it not been for an editorial comment that was added by The News Editorial Board which is even more dramatic than the story itself. Whatever it says about the story, the note says much more about the state of uncertainty, unease, and lack of trust in institutions that define today’s Pakistan. Maybe it is best to read the note before the story: