So what I have been doing, skipping from place to place, is mostly reading newspapers of all sorts and a couple of things seem to be common to all our sorry little rags here : namely (a) there seems to be a general and very mistaken campaign underway to smear our armed forces, which arent entirely bad and it seems our so-called 'journalists' are going overboard with whatever nefarious and vested purpose/s they have in mind; and a lot of outright lies and shameful gossip is going is being reported as 'news' (b) there seems to be a proliferation of all manners of stupid reports on the doings of our so-called 'politicians'-- and even their most inane statements are being given major importance.
Take the case of the Hoti chappie, as big an ass as ever drew breath, and his silly little letter of invitation. Now, the Hoti chap is Chief Minister of the North-West Frontier Province (mistakenly refered to as 'Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa' these days) and the reason he's CM of this beleaguered place. replete with daily killings and bombings and what not, with its economy in tatters and almost 59% of its population finding it nearly impossible to survive and make ends meet anymore, is because he's a very big bootlicker. He has the special knack of being able to lick the boots of all and sundry, ranging from 'Greedy Pig' Zardari to Slimy Owais Ghani, so it doesnt matter what is really happening in the North-West Frontier, people may die or starve to death for all he may care, so long as he can be CM.
But at last, Hoti has overdone himself. He has reached new heights (lows?) of bootlicking. He has written a letter to HH the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (better known as Prince William and Kate, the newly-weds) in the UK, in truly fawning and shamefully extravagant terms, grovelling and squirming like its nobody's business, inviting them to come and see the Shandur Polo Festival (pl see my last post)! All our newspapers seem to have picked up this item and made much of it.
Of course, the British Royal Family is 'into' polo and other equine sports and all; and Shandur is undoubtedly a spectacle worth seeing, even if not exactly Hurlingham. But what I would please like to know is: (a) has Hoti thought about the safety angle, with hundreds of militants lurking about in Dir and Swat, barely 70-80 kms away and with many rough and unpatrolable mountain tracks linking these places and every possible risk looming? and (b) does it make sense to invite 'Royals' at this time, to this poor shattered province, wasting meagre and much-needed provincial resources and police manpower on a show-shaw, a whimsical protocol excercise?
But there's no end to the lengths our politicians will go to get press coverage from those other idiots, our 'journalists'.
And Hoti's bootlicking propensities must, no doubt, also seek higher and higher levels, all the time; some sort of international bootlicking scope and expression. What next, I wonder? Will he invite the Pope to officiate at his nephew's wedding, soon? Or maybe invite Obama to come and take over the NWFP as an American fief? We await Hoti's new actions with bated breath. And while we wait, we recollect that Hoti belongs to the ANP (Awami National Party), formerly the NAP (National Awami Party) banned for years, the direct organisational offspring of the famous 'Red Shirts' of the late Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the 'Bacha Khan', also known as the 'Frontier Gandhi', who once struggled against the colonial-minded grovelling that Hoti specialises in. What more can one say? Shame.
