More than 27 years have peen passed and I still vividly remember a chapter in my class 4 Urdu textbook titiled “Taqatwar ka-un” (who is powerful?) which left a lasting impact on me.

The story narrates a situation where an infant baby is recklessly crying and a huge rotund wrestler is vainly trying to make her stop weeping. The mighty pugilist first tries to impress the innocent tot by flexing his massive muscles. When it doesn’t help, he attempts to intimidate her with scary grimaces - to no avail. At last, he losses his temper and starts yelling at her. As a result frightening the poor little soul further and driving her to weep and cry even more hysterically.

At that time, appears a frail young girl, who affectionately lifts the baby up, starts fondling her gently, caresses her tenderly, talks to her and there we go. It doesn’t take many minutes that the baby calms down, starts playing and giggling. The story ends with a question: taqatwar ka-un?

Over the years, I have seen a number of times, superficially mighty giants turning out no more than flimsy clay figures when the crunch comes and sometimes, apparently diminutive individuals proving themselves the most courageous ones around.

Our incumbent commando messiah is very fond of representing himself as a commando – actually a pretty irrelevant qualification in politics and for a statesman. Yet a feature that many Pakistanis seem to be naively little bit too impressed of.

Probably, because of the SSG stint, his upper chamber occasionally fails him. He never shies away from threatening folk who dispute his whims, of every type of consequences. He doesn’t mind trying to shriek out women delegates - remember his address to women in New York. He has reportedly wanted to slap Asma Jehangir. He ostensibly considers gagging rape victims as a benchmark of bravery. Annihilating recalcitrant Balochs is yet another favorite subject of our pragmatic commando leader.

But, at the same time, he doesn’t have the “gallantry” to fulfill his once-a-year modest constitutional obligation (sure, if he considers himself a constitutionally valid president) to address the joint session of the parliament. The only time he did gather some courage was the one when he left the floor with fists upraised as he had dislodged Indians from Siachen. He is more than glad to attend embarrassingly partisan rallies of rented crowds in ludicrously attires but is tantalizingly afraid of facing a handful of dissenting voices (to whom his uniformed thugs cannot instantly rough up at the spot). Bravo!

Likewise, I have never been able to solve the equation: all of our military leaders have always been dead sure of their immense popularity and 200 % support but still they have never dared to have an open and honest electoral approval? Why do our mighty generals need to employ every imaginable dirty trick to hang on while enjoying solid endorsement of the silent majority is beyond my limited intelligence?

Hence, time to ask, taqatwar ka-un: old, feeble civilian presidents who had never missed their annual addresses or the one wearing SSG fatigues, afraid of facing a handful of legislatures from opposition benches? Who are mightier: civilians, who for all their flaws come to power because of elections, no matter how erroneous they are, or the one who persistently shies away from an open contest despite having all agencies on their disposal?

Ironically, in Pakistan, goons sneaking in through back doors in the middle of night and surviving solely because of brute force consider themselves supra brave.

Another equally relevant question would be to ask the suitability of the one as supreme commander of armed forces if without uniform and accompanying organizational cover he doesn’t dare to even tread out of the very highly guarded Army house.