Adil Najam
This political parody is now a little dated (was circulating on the internet immediately after US President Bush’s 2006 visit to Pakistan). But it was funny then and is still funny.
Given where US-Pakistan relations are going, it may be even more pertinent today than before. In case you are wondering where those relations are going, consider the following from The Daily Times (June 11, 2006):
WASHINGTON: The United States has reduced aid to Pakistan in the current fiscal year to $300 million on grounds that Islamabad has “failed to do enoughâ€Â? to improve democracy and human rights… The bill specifically cited the “increasing lack of respect for human rights, especially women’s rights, and the lack of progress for improving democratic governance and rule of lawâ€Â? as chief reasons for reducing Pakistan’s funds.
Anyhow, as a piece of political humor it is really well-done and in some ways timeless. So, if you have not seen it yet, here goes (Click on image below):
Adil Najam
The Pakistani Piggy Bank (from Flickr.com by Umair Mohsin; by the way, Umair has a very interesting blog of his own called ‘Writings of an outsider looking in‘).
These baked clay ‘kujjas’ or ‘gallaz’ are the first piggy banks for many children in Pakistan; certainly was for me.
Since money could only be retrieved by breaking the entire artifact, there was always an incentive not to break it too soon. I wonder if it will still be around now that metal currency is being phased out and a note-only economy is on its way. Don’t know if I will miss the coins; but I already miss my ‘kujja’.
Adil Najam
Both the President and the Prime Minister of Pakistan have ‘instructed’ government agencies to ‘soften’ Pakistan’s image. If only it was that easy. As an editorial in The Daily Times (June 11) pointed out, the real need is to confront our reality, not our image.
President Pervez Musharraf on Friday directed the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and other relevant departments to highlight the “soft image”? of Pakistan in the country and abroad. As he spoke, the National Assembly was busy doing just the opposite. The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) demanded that the house offer fateha for the soul of Abu Musa Al Zarqawi. MMA legislators Maulana Ghafoor Haideri and Dr Farid Paracha wanted to call down blessings on Al Zarqawi. The speaker prevented the embarrassing situation from getting out of hand by quoting the rules, which say the house could offer fateha only on the demise of a present or former member of parliament or his relatives…. The truth is that our “hard image” is not projected falsely by “Western media”. Our image is what we are, as proved by the Al Zarqawi incident above. No one is clear about what Pakistan should be – not even President Musharraf, who talks of a “soft image” but doesn’t show the will or ability to roll back the hard image and its manifestations.
Read full editorial here.
