BB's statements

 Published in Daily Times on October 5, 2007

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Sir, 

One can now expect PPP chairperson Ms. Benazir Bhutto to say anything to please her foreign masters. First, she said that she would allow the IAEA to interrogate Dr. A Q Khan. Now comes the statement that she would allow the US to bomb targets in Pakistan. I suppose we shouldn't be surprised if her next proposal would be to ask the Indian government to send troops into our tribal areas to put down the militants. It seems that Ms. Bhutto puts a higher value on her political ambitions than the sovereignty and dignity of the country.

Shakir Lakhani

Karachi

Helping Pakistan

 Published in Time magazine on April 14, 1997

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PERHAPS BHUTTO IS THE ONLY PERSON IN Pakistan who believes she "helped this country recover twice." Her capacity for self delusion is amazing. Does helping Pakistan mean causing it to be labeled the second most corrupt country in the world, or price increases over three years of 50% to 60% on almost every essential item, or having the value of rupee drop from 25 to 40 against dollar in the same period? I hope she never "helps" Pakistan again.

Shakir Lakhani 

Karachi 

You are entering BB country

Published in The News on November 3, 1996

Those who have access to the Internet got the news of the massive devaluation of the rupee at nine in the morning. By ten o' clock practically the whole country had heard about it. But our worthy Minister of State for Finance, a past master at presenting back-breaking budgets, was totally unaware of it, even at noon on the same day.

Surely this is the kind of thing that can happen only in BB's Pakistan. If she can choose people like him, no wonder the country is in such a sorry state.

At the very least, all these ministers and advisers should be made to repay the salaries and allowances that they have taken from the national exchequer. 

"Nine" may have been Benazir's unlucky number

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Many years ago, I read a book on numerology. According to that book (which someone borrowed and failed to return), my lucky number is 5. I was born on September 5, 1944 (05-09-1944). If you add 5 and 9, the result is 14, and if you add 1 and 4, the result is again 5. And if you add 5, 9, and 1944, it adds up to 1958, but 1+9+5+8 adds up to 23, which again results in 5 (2+3). So I should either have been a billionaire, or a very famous person. I'm sorry to say that I am neither. That's why I have never believed in numerology or astrology or palmistry. When I was around 20 or 25, someone looked at my palm and predicted that I would die before the age of 40. Another charlatan (my father's cousin, a dentist from Bombay) looked at my palm and strongly advised me never to marry, as my wife would sue for divorce within three years. I'm now 77 and have been married for 48 years, so naturally I believe all this palmistry and astrology/numerology business is pure mumbo jumbo.

But I'm amazed at the prevalence of the number nine in the life of Benazir Bhutto. She was born on June 21, 1953. June 21 adds up to 9 (21+6=27, 2+7=9). The four digits of 1953 ultimately add up to 9 (1+9+5+3=18, 1+8=9). Again, all the digits in 21-06-1953 ultimately add up to 9 (21+6+1+9+5+3=45, 4+5=9). So, we may conclude that 9 was her lucky number, as she became famous as well as a billionaire). 

But then, she was killed on 27 December, 2007. The digits in 27 add up to 9, and those in 2007 also add up to 9. When she died, her age was 54 (5+4=9). From this, one may conclude that the number 9 was very unlucky for her. I know that she was a very superstitious woman, so I wonder why she didn't stay at home that fateful day when she was assassinated.

“Corruption is our right”: Have you not looted Sindh enough already, PPP?

Published in the Express Tribune Blogs on July 6, 2017

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Really, the scale of corruption in Sindh is mind-boggling.

Ask any schoolboy in Pakistan which political party is the most corrupt and he will reply at once,

“Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).”

Even before a Swiss court convicted the former president and his wife Benazir Bhutto of money laundering, the leaders of this party have been known to be highly corrupt. It was not for nothing that former President Asif Ali Zardari was known as Mr 10%.

So it was highly ironical to see PPP stalwarts such as Aitzaz Ahsan in Parliament demanding accountability of Nawaz Sharif. Either he forgot the rampant corruption in his own party or deliberately chose to ignore it. Mr Ahsan, how can we ever forget your party’s Prime Minister Raja Ashraf’s corruption in the rental power case?

And surely you remember that payment of Ayyan Ali’s air ticket was made from the same bank account as that of Bilwal Bhutto Zardari’s? Have you never wondered how an ordinary low-paid Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) meter reader (Syed Khurshid Shah) became so wealthy?

So why should we be surprised that the shameless PPP majority party in the Sindh Assembly passed the bill to repeal the applicability of the National Accountability Ordinance, preventing the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) from taking action against corruption by its ministers?

After all, it was a PPP stalwart (Abdul Qayyum Jatoi) who said,

“Corruption is our right!”

What he really meant, of course, was,

“Corruption is our religion!”

https://youtu.be/OEQZ_iZs3NQ

While tabling the bill, Sindh Law Minister Ziaul Hasan Lanjar said,

“The Sindh government will introduce a new anti-corruption law in 30 days… to eliminate corruption from the province.”

If the recent past is any guide, the Sindh government will probably appoint someone like Superintendent of Police (SP) Fida Hussain Shah (who is himself facing corruption charges) to investigate corruption in the province.

And we should not forget the strong resistance put up by the Sindh government towards the appointment of Inspector General of Police (IGP) AD Khawaja. You cannot appoint your party activists as policemen as long as you have an honest officer heading the police department, can you, Mr Murad Ali Shah? Nor can you have ghost teachers in ghost schools if NAB is constantly looking over your shoulder.

Really, the scale of corruption in Sindh is mind-boggling. From sale of parks in Karachi to mismanagement of water purification plants in Thar, there is looting and plundering everywhere.

Gangsters like Uzair Baloch have been freely used to further the agenda of Sindh’s rulers, while a little known Sindh government employee (Sharjeel Memon) became a billionaire within three years.

Even though property prices have shot up numerous times and the common man can no longer afford to buy a house, the Sindh government charges taxes and stamp duties at the old prices (which are only 2% of the actual values). Government employees in the Sindh Building Control Authority (SBCA) and the land department take huge bribes from builders as well.

So, by making NAB ineffective in the province, the Sindh government wants to ensure that the loot and plunder of Karachi continues. It doesn’t want to be held accountable for the garbage on the streets of Karachi, nor does it want anyone to prevent the sale of amenity parks at throwaway prices to builders.

So I wasn’t surprised at all to see a glum and despondent Shah in the apex committee meeting with the army chief, which was held to impress upon him the need for, amongst other things, improvements in the functioning of the police department and to appoint police officers on merit.

I know that he was upset because he had never thought that there would be resistance from any quarter to his ministers’ aims to further enrich themselves, nor to his power to appoint unqualified louts in the provincial police department. He thought that by exempting Sindh from NAB, people like Memon, Dr Asim Hussain, and former SBCA Director General Manzoor Qadir Kaka would now be immune from prosecution.

Well, he is wrong, as he will soon find out when the proposed law is struck down by the courts.

Get real, Mr Shah, the people who voted for your party are not ignorant. They can see that there has been no development at all in Sindh, when compared to the other provinces. They know that your party has failed them.

You still have about a year to do something for the people of your province, Mr Shah. Stop thinking of protecting the corrupt, start accountability, get rid of those who are bent upon making themselves rich. Otherwise it will be too late, and the people will come out on the streets to remove your party from power, as they did in the times of Ayub Khan and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

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)

https://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/52693/corruption-is-our-right-have-you-not-looted-sindh-enough-already-ppp/

Why is Aitzaz Ahsan silent over his party's corruption?

Silence over Corruption

Published in Daily Times on June 29, 2016

Sir: While it is good to see Aitzaz Ahsan protesting against Nawaz Sharif's corruption, why did he remain silent when the late Benazir Bhutto and her spouse were convicted by a Swiss court for money laundering? Why does not he talk about the lavish lifestyle of his party boss Asif Ali Zardari, who lives in palatial houses in Dubai, France and elsewhere? And I wonder why he is completely silent over children's deaths in Thar and his party's dismal performance in Sindh. 

Shakir Lakhani

Karachi 

Swiss conundrum: why not punish Malik Qayyum?

Published in The News on September 29, 2012

Swiss conundrum

This is with reference to your editorial ‘Swiss conundrum’ (September 27). Why hasn’t the Supreme Court taken any action against former attorney general Malik Qayyum for writing the letter which has resulted in a huge financial loss to the country?

The ex-attorney general was the same person who, as a judge, had earlier convicted both Benazir Bhutto and Asif Zardari in a corruption case. So he, of all the people, should have known that what he was doing was illegal.

Shakir Lakhani

Karachi

Why not just write the letter?

Published in The Express Tribune on February 8, 2012

KARACHI: This is with reference to Fauzia Wahab’s article of February 7, titled “The trial of her grave”. If there is no case against Benazir Bhutto and Asif Ali Zardari why is there so much resistance to writing the letter to the Swiss court that the Supreme Court of Pakistan wants written? Far from being a trial of her grave, this would prove that she was honest and incorruptible because the result, going by a reading of Ms Wahab’s article, would clear up all allegations of corruption against the late prime minister.

Shakir Lakhani

Nincompoops ruling Pakistan

There was a time when you could find intelligent people in Pakistan. In those early years after independence, bureaucrats knew everything about what they had to do. Federal and provincial ministers were knowledgeable about their subjects. Gradually there was deterioration in the quality of civil servants and nowadays I want to bang my head against the wall sometimes when dealing with brainless, dim-witted government officials whose only concern is how to make a million every day.

As usual, the rot began with Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who sacked 1300 able and devoted civil servants purely because they belonged to the Urdu-speaking community. He then appointed virtually illiterate people in governement. His finance minister was Dr. Mubashir Hassan, who knew nothing about economics (he was a civil engineer by profession).

Bhutto's daughter Benazir appointed an illiterate peasant as the principal of a school, a man who couldn't sign his own name. Benazir herself didn't know much about economics or even diplomacy (the president of the IMF once called her "a liar"). Her husband Zardari has gone a step further: he has appointed a woman as foreign minister who has majored in hotel management. Hina Rabbani Khar probably can't find Kashmir or Russia on a map, but she's been sent to India to hold talks with the foreign minister of that country.

Zardari has also appointed one of his friends (Dr. Asim) the minister for petroleum and natural resources. This man has run a hospital (where Zardari was hospitalized while in jail for eleven years), so he should have been made health minister. He proved that he's a nincompoop by saying that there's no law in Pakistan to deal with the rampant gas theft in the country. Now gas thieves will be even more encouraged to continue stealing gas. No wonder the country is in such a mess!

Curbs on the media

Published in The News on August 14, 2010

I've noticed that whenever conditions deteriorate so much that the people want the government to resign, the media is attacked. This happened even in the days when Ayub Khan, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif were the rulers. Apparently our politicians believe that it's the newspapers and TV channels that are responsible for their predicaments, not their own misdeeds.

SHAKIR LAKHANI

Karachi

Swiss cases

Published in The News on March 08, 2010

The CEC, Justice (r) Hamid Ali Mirza, while dismissing the case against eligibility of the president, said that no court of law had convicted Mr Zardari of any crime. I would like to point out that in 2003 both Asif Zardari and Benazir Bhutto were convicted by Swiss judge Daniel Devaud, who sentenced them to a six-month suspended jail term, fined them $50,000 each and ordered them to pay more than $2 million to the Pakistani government. Further details are available at the website, https://news.bbc.co.uk/ 2/hi/south_asia/3125277.stm.

Shakir Lakhani

Karachi

Quaid’s birthplace

Published in Dawn on January 06, 2009

WITH reference to the letter, ‘Quaid’s birthplace’ (Jan 2), I would like to ask the writer the following questions:

— Why is it that every few years this non-issue is raised, although it was settled a long time ago?

— He writes: “In our textbooks…..Jherruck was mentioned as his birthplace”. What about the textbooks in which I and millions of other Pakistanis read that his birthplace was Karachi?

— Isn’t it a fact that the Quaid chose Karachi as the capital of Pakistan because it was his birthplace?

— Didn’t Mr Jinnah himself say many times that he was born in Karachi?

— Didn’t Miss Fatima Jinnah and Ms Benazir Bhutto also say the same thing?

— Why didn’t the Sindh Assembly raise this issue in the early days of Pakistan and later (when the Founder of Pakistan and his associates and relatives were still alive)?

— Why didn’t anyone object when Stanley Wolpert’s official biography of Mr Jinnah was published?

Finally, isn’t it a fact that certain vested interests got this piece of disinformation inserted in text books of rural Sindh so that (as the writer himself says), “by declaring Jherruck as the birthplace of the Quaid, we can build an infrastructure of roads, schools and colleges in the town”?

SHAKIR LAKHANI

Karachi

Needless controversy: Quaid-e-Azam was born in Thatta?

Posted on Chowrangi.com on January 4, 2009 

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Every few years there is an attempt by vested interests to create doubts among Pakistanis about Mr. Jinnah’s birthplace. There is of course no doubt that he was born in Karachi, but the detractors say that he was born in Jherruck (near Thatta). I have studied this matter in detail, and the only basis for it is that someone (I think it was the late Syed Ghulam Mustafa Shah, PPP MNA from Thatta) inserted in Sindhi textbooks the disinformation about the founder of Pakistan being born in Jherruck. His aim of course was to make Jherruck a place of pilgrimage so that its infrastructure would be improved, roads and schools would be built and tourism in the region would increase.

Some years ago, during BB’s second stint in power, this controversy was raised by those who apparently think Mr. Jinnah was out of his senses when he said he was born in Karachi (and this was the main reason for selecting Karachi as the capital of Pakistan). Even his two sisters (Ms Fatima Jinnah and Ms Shirin Jinnah) said many times that Karachi was the great man’s birthplace.

But just because of a single textbook which said otherwise, Ms Humera Alwani, PPP legislator has presented a bill to declare Jherruck as the birthplace of the Quaid. My question is, why wasn’t this issue raised when Mr. Jinnah and his associates were alive or when the Quaid’s official biography was published in the nineteen fifties? Why didn’t Sindhi MNAs and MPAs object when BB herself said that Karachi was the city in which the Quaid was born? And finally, why are they ignoring the many English and Urdu textbooks in Pakistan which confirm this?

I wouldn’t be surprised if one of these days someone builds a tomb in Jherruck and claims that the Quaid is buried there (and not in the mausoleum in Karachi)! Anything is possible in Pakistan.

 Shakir Lakhani

Scotland Yard probe into BB's murder

Published in The News on Friday, February 15, 2008

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The PPP has expectedly rejected the Scotland Yard report which discussed the cause of Benazir Bhutto's death. Although the British detectives made it clear in the beginning that their assigned task was to find out how the PPP leader was killed, not to investigate about the people involved in it, the PPP leadership did not ask the government for widening the scope of the investigation. Common sense says that it is more important to find out who planned the murder than to determine what caused it.

Shakir Lakhani

Karachi

A powerful president

Published in DAWN on February 2, 2008

ACCORDING to the 1973 Constitution, the president is just a useless figurehead. Perhaps the words of the first president under this Constitution (Chaudhry Fazl Elahi) sum it up nicely: “No one responds even when I shout abusive words.” Gen Zia changed the whole character of the Constitution by introducing Article 58(b), which allows a president to sack the prime minister and dissolve the assemblies. But should an indirectly elected president have such sweeping powers? How can a corrupt or inefficient prime minister be got rid of? We have seen how the country suffered under Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. People are helpless when they see that ministers are not interested in improving their lot at such a juncture, one sincerely wishes that there was some way of removing them from power and so, only a powerful president can do something. But in Pakistan, the president has no moral authority, since he is elected by the provincial assemblies and the senate. We should think of amending the Constitution so that the president is elected directly. A president elected directly would be a powerful person, and if he felt that the government was incapable of performing its functions, he could dismiss it or dissolve the assemblies. This seems to be the only answer to the present crisis.

SHAKIR LAKHANI

Karachi

Conspiracy theories

Published in Chowrangi blogs on January 23rd, 2008 

For some reason, Pakistanis have a conspiracy theory for every incident that adversely affects them. Until now, of course, everything that was wrong with the country was blamed on a conspiracy by Indo-Zionists, who apparently were very good at disrupting life in Pakistan. Now attention has shifted to the U.S., which is believed to be responsible for almost everything bad that happens here, whether it is the sugar shortage, the rampant inflation, the flour crisis, or the recent murder of Benazir Bhutto.

The mother of all conspiracy theories of course, holds that the U.S. itself planned and executed the 9/11 tragedy. According to those who favour this line of thinking, the hijackers were not Muslim Arabs, but Arabic speaking Jews. And why would the U.S. do something which would result in the deaths of over three thousand of its residents? What a stupid question! It’s long been known that the Americans wanted control over the oil reserves of Muslim nations (although there is plenty of oil and gas in other regions of the world as well). 9/11 was therefore an excuse to occupy Afghanistan and Iraq and ultimately the oil and gas fields further north.

An extension of this theory is that there is no such organization as Al-Qaeda. I know apparently normal individuals who say that all those audio and video tapes of Al-Qaeda leaders are fake, since they mostly appear when George Bush needs to bolster his sagging popularity or wants another excuse to send more troops into Iraq or Afghanistan.

And now we have another conspiracy theory. BB’s murder was neither the work of the militants nor the agencies. The proponents of this one believe that the U.S. itself engineered the assassination (to seriously destabilize Pakistan), since everyone with even limited intelligence is supposed to know that Americans can’t tolerate an Islamic country which has nuclear weapons. And for these theorists, the recent CIA disclosure about Al-Qaeda being responsible for BB’s death only proves that the Americans are deeply involved! (like they were in General Zia’s plane crash).

And now for my own conspiracy theory: everything that’s happened (including 9/11) has been orchestrated by Martians. They want to occupy the earth, so they’ve poisoned the minds of people like George Bush and his neocons. They’re betting that one of these days George Bush will press the nuclear button and most living things will die. The Martians will then descend in their space ships and start living here (The Martians I know don’t need food, they can live by breathing radioactive air). They will put the few surviving humans and animals in special cages, and peace will again be restored on earth. That’s my theory, and I’m sticking to it until someone comes up with another conspiracy theory which is even weirder than this one.

Shakir Lakhani

How to become chairman of the Pakistan Peoples' Party

Published in Chowrangi on December 31 2007

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It seems that unless a person has the surname “Bhutto” he or she can never be the chairman or chairperson of the largest political party in the country. The new chairman, the late BB’s son Bilawal, had to rename himself as Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, to be acceptable to its members before he could assume the mantle of leadership of the party. Of course, in a few days, he will be referred to as Bilawal Bhutto, and people will forget that his surname was Zardari.

It seems that all those other men and women in the PPP hierarchy can never reach the top in the PPP. So I suggest that all of them change their names and insert “Bhutto” before their last names. Sherry Rehman, for instance, should change her name to Sherry Bhutto Rehman, while Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani (famous for his wandering hand in a widely circulated video) should immediately change his name to Syed Yousuf Bhutto Raza Gilani. In fact every member and voter of the party should now be a Bhutto. The result of course will be that there will be as many Bhuttos as there are Khans in the country. This might even result in the party holding elections to select its leaders.

Confusion over cause of Benazir Bhutto’s death

Published in Chowrangi.com 

Initial reports said that Benazir Bhutto died due to a bullet in the head and another one in the neck. Now the government spokesman says that she was killed neither by bullets nor by the bomb. It seems she fell and her head struck a lever in the vehicle in which she was travelling.

I remember a similar confusion regarding her father’s death, after he was hanged in Rawalpindi. The government said that he had been hanged by Tarah Masih, the official executioner, and there were reports that her father (Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto) had strongly resisted being taken to the gallows. In fact, he had been quite sure that the government would never dare hang him, as he believed that the masses would come out on the streets if it did. As it turned out, there were practically no protests in the country after his execution. But his supporters always said that he was not hanged, but beaten to death in his cell. To this day, you still come across people who believe this.

Now it seems that the real cause of Benazir Bhutto’s death will never be known. But the extensive damage caused by her followers following her death is surprising. When her father was hanged, the government had ensured that any protest would be dealt with sternly. This time, the government was not prepared and many innocent people have died as a result.

Shakir Lakhani

Oh, please!

Published in The Friday Times on 23-29 November, 2007

In a recent article published in the New York Times, Benazir Bhutto says, “My party would most likely have swept parliamentary elections.”

Most of her followers, however, believe that since she has the support of the Americans, the elections will be heavily rigged in her favour and her party will get more than a two thirds majority in the next parliament.

Shakir Lakhani

Karachi.

Fuzzy math

Published in The Friday Times on November 16th, 2007

Sir, Why have Pakistani Peoples Party (PPP) supporters been claiming that three million people participated in the rally which welcomed Benazir Bhutto (BB) on October 18? There is a method to calculate the number of people in any procession, and I can say with certainty that less than 100,000 people were there.

I base my calculations on the fact that the procession was only a kilometre and a half in length, and that a kilometre can accommodate only 50 buses (most of those participating in the rally were brought there in buses). That works out to 75 buses in the procession or 7,500 people (you can’t fit more than 100 people in and on top of a bus).

If we further assume that there were 2,000 cars (with five people in each), together with 10,000 motorcycles (with two people on each), we arrive at a figure of 45,000 participants. That’s less than half a lakh. Let’s assume that 25,000 people living in the houses along the route of the procession also came out to gawk at BB, the total is now 70,000.

Another way is to work out how many people can be squeezed into the space occupied by the participants. Since there were 75 buses and 2,000 cars (let’s ignore the motorcycles), only 50 feet of width was available to the people on the kilometre and a half of Sharah e Faisal. A human being needs at least four square feet when standing or walking, and a kilometre and a half of a 50 foot wide road is equal to 250,000 square feet. Dividing this by four (the space needed by a man), the number of people who were in the rally works out to be 62,500. Nowhere near the three million claimed by party officials!