I
no speak English!
JANUARY 15, 2020
Our leaders’ recent pearls
of wisdom are enough to make one conclude that the country is in safe hands.
The advisor on commerce, for instance, has just claimed that businessmen are
responsible for inflation. He said, “The business community is causing rise of
inflation in the country” and asked them to make efforts to reduce it,
according to a news item. What can I say? He should know, being the scion of
one of those twenty two richest families in the country until forty years ago.
So we were wrong all the time, it seems. Inflation isn’t caused by devaluation
or the steep rise in energy prices. The high cost of diesel (which is used in
trucks transporting goods), doesn’t cause prices of foodstuffs to increase.
It’s really businessmen like meat, fruit and vegetable sellers who are
responsible. So what can they do to reduce inflation? Give away their goods
free of charge?
Then there is the Dear
Leader himself. After more than twenty two years of struggle, he’s suddenly
realized that peace can only be found in the grave and that only in fairy tales
do people live happily ever after. You could have fooled me. So all that
yelling and screaming on top of that container was for nothing?
But that’s not all. He
said those politicians who make speeches in English in our assemblies suffer from an inferiority complex,
as most of their listeners don’t understand the language (apparently he doesn’t
know that the Quaid couldn’t speak Urdu, so he always used English at rallies).
As has happened so many
times with the Great Khan, one of his own party men immediately did something
which proved he didn’t agree with him. He appointed a simple matriculate as
education minister in the Khan’s home province of KP. When asked why, he said
the man was highly qualified as he spoke excellent English. That’s all? I’ve
come across taxi drivers who speak very good English, much better than the
National Assembly speaker who should stick to speaking in his mother tongue
(whatever that is). I’m referring to his egregious accent, when he said,
“Aaaaal those in favor, say aaaaaye!”. One wonders why he couldn’t have asked
that question in Urdu.
As for inferiority
complexes, the next time Imran Khan makes a speech at the U.N., he too should
speak in Urdu (or Punjabi, which really qualifies to be the national language,
being spoken by seven out of ten Pakistanis). The leaders of France and Germany
don’t make speeches in English at international forums, despite being fluent in
it. Nor do the Chinese. It’s high time our Dear Leader shed his own inferiority
complex, he should also make speeches in Punjabi in the country’s largest
province, it will win him many more votes (assuming that the next elections are
not rigged).
And finally, the Great Khan should watch the viral video of the
senior-most police officer in KP lecturing students on the benefits of positive
thinking. If that doesn’t make him immediately ban the use of English in the
country, nothing will. In the meantime, I no speak English!
The writer is an engineer, a former
visiting lecturer at NED Engineering College
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