Dear
Imran Khan, you’re no better than Nawaz Sharif or Asif Ali Zardari
The latest scandal
involving the PTI seems to prove that Imran Khan is not different at all from
other corrupt Pakistani politicians.
Those
who consider Imran Khan to be a paragon of virtue say that he
has never been known to misuse public funds. If you mention the discrepancy in
his statements that the Bani Gala house was gifted by his first wife, then his about-turn
on the issue, they say,
“Oh, that was his own
money, not filched from his hospital or from the government, like other
well-known politicians are supposed to have done”.
Even
when you tell them that he ignored the findings of his own commission on the 2013 internal party
elections, they say, no, no, nothing’s wrong, such things happen in other
parties as well.
But the
latest scandal involving the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) seems to prove
that Imran Khan is not different at all from other corrupt Pakistani politicians. The PTI-led
government in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) has given an advertising contract worth billions to a company in which
its own additional secretary information (Javed
Faisal Khan) was once an employee.
“So what’s wrong with
that, where’s the corruption?”Imran’s drooling admirers will ask.
First,
the K-P government chose four advertising companies out of ten that
had been initially selected. The reason these four were chosen was that they
were capable of executing the contract (which, by the way, was about telling
the gullible public in K-P what a wonderful job the provincial government has
done in the past three years, like altering text books to
prevent children from seeing pictures of women and animals).
Later, it was decided by
the steering committee comprising of, among two members, (one of them being
none other than the same Javed Faisal Khan), that the four companies earlier
deemed to be qualified for the job, were in fact not capable and lacked the
capacity to run the advertisement campaign. So, the rules were relaxed, and the
multi-billion rupee contract was given to the company in which the PTI
additional secretary information was an employee until recently.
What
do we make of this whole affair? Is there no difference between Imran Khan, Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif? All his brouhaha about accountability was
just a sham? Imran Khan, we are waiting, if you
really are incorruptible, you will investigate this affair in detail
and issue instructions to the K-P government to award the contract on the basis
of merit. If you fail to do so, you will only prove that you are another
corrupt Pakistani politician.
Shakir Lakhani
Engineer, former visiting lecturer at NED Engineering College,
industrialist, associated with petroleum/chemical industries for many years.
Loves writing, and (in the opinion of most of those who know him), mentally
unbalanced. He tweets @shakirlakhani (twitter.com/shakirlakhani)
http://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/44345/dear-imran-khan-youre-no-better-than-nawaz-sharif-or-asif-ali-zardari/
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