Open Letter to Prime Minister Jamali

Romair # 31

(Awais Leghari recently graduated from college,.... is now the head of the whole Science and Tech. of Pakistan. He seriously couldn`t get a job as an intern in any IT company in North America (or in Pakistan for that matter)

Nothing to do with Awais. But a Minister has to be a politician - not MCSE, Diploma or degrees holder in his field. Lots of technocrats are under him to do that bit. He is elected & young. I find that rather encouraging.

Could Laloo Prashad get an internship in a railway Company?

NHK

Romair, impulsiveness is not always correct. All of a sudden you have a heartache for Ata and Hoodbouy. Being actually involved in professional education, I have a true measure of the contributions of both.

Being that death an inevitable end will come when it comes. The issue that Jamali is no more is not important. The issue is experimentation with demcracy and dispensibility of institutions. I feel the next victim will be the wise man who suggested that the army should do such hobnobbing with the politicians. He must be quite uncomfortable in Lahore.

Why reinvent a wheel when one comes up with weird things like everything but a wheel.

This is reminding me of the musical chairs that were played in the late 50s.

We are an engine in full throttle with the gears in neutral.

Shaukat would perform better in select areas. Take my word, Pakistan`s dependency would increase. Note the date and time. 27 june 9:26 AM

A very sad person

Bring back Benazir Bhutto, deposed queen in distress, in my earnest and humble opinion.

At least she used to look good.

More than that, she can then proceed to find an economist or banker or IMF or World bank type and place him/her in power, while controlling the strings from behind.

Turban will help.

Humpty-Dumpty Jamali was doing OK - just sailing along - at least a peg in the system as per the Constitution.

Why unceremoniously get him out - Choudhry`s are a bigger calamity - why not let the system run by the book - why no patience.

Jamali was talking about Musarraf taking off his uniform a bit too often in Media - and Musharraf is working out some long term strategy to hang on - but he is mistaken.

The Chaudhries are too foxy - and could take him along when they go.

Not good at all.

Presently, the only two political entities in Parliament that can not be bought, ignored or brushed aside by the Army are the MQM & MMA.

Nazarhayatkhan #33,

I wholeheartedly disagree. The minister of S&T has to be able to make decisions. It is not upto his staff to make decisions for him, their job is to provide him with options, the ultimate choices should be his. If he does not know anything about S&T then he is like an 18 year old boy on an island full of lesbians; useless and frustrated. I don`t support this only for the S&T ministry, I believe the law minister should be a brilliant lawyer or former judge, the foreign minister should be a career diplomat, the finance minister should be an acclaimed economist (Shaukat Aziz is a case in point, it`s the same Pakistan, it`s the same bureaucrats under him, why is Pakistan performing better economically under him?) etc.

For example, under Dr. Ata-ur-Rahman (a renowned researcher in chemistry), the government launched highly aggressive measures to train and attract research manpower. If all goes according to plan, Pakistan should be able to feel the difference in the next 5 years, hopefully our research output will start to increase. Put a BA pass pimply-faced kid incharge of the ministry of S&T, who doesn`t know shit from swiss cheese, and you have the recipe for disaster par excellence.

Why you chose to draw parallels with Laloo`s knowledge of railways is simply beyond me. You make two very thin assumptions when you advance that argument:
1) India can do no wrong (or at the very least, its political system can`t)
2) Laloo is beneficial to the Indian railways as its helmsman

Also you claim, rather grandiosely and with no substantiating arguments, that a minister has to be politician and not ``a diploma or degree holder in his field``. I would certainly love to hear your supporting arguments in this favor.

Irfan.

PS: If you are going to use a system as a baseline, why not try the US instead of India, although I`m sure many people would disagree, but on the whole I feel justified in saying that the US is-for the moment-doing better than India. All secretaries in the US Administrations are usually highly educated and regarded professionals in their fields (politician or not doesn`t really matter).

NHK,

Perhaps you haven`t been following the Pakistani politics... but MQM is in the Government supporting every decision that Musharraf takes... and MMA, that party which owes its existence to the Army`s meddling, is already the King`s loyal opposition. MMA not being bought or ignored is the joke of the century... these Mullahs, these enemies of Pakistan.. have been bought and sold on the international market to destabilize Pakistan for a very long time...

Read Charlie Wilson`s War ... Jamaat-e-Islami, and other religious parties were coopted by the Americans ... the educational system that we don`t tire complaining about was formulated in University of Nebraska.... The roots of this retrograde deobandi and fundamentalist Islam in Pakistan are red blue and white.


These Mullah bast@rds ... the enemies of this country right from the start when they were hand in glove with the Indian National Congress, not out of some ideological similarity (what similarity could they have with the secular congress) but simply their greed and lust for control over the muslim community, these conservative doctors of reaction ... bigoted fanatics.... are the biggest sell outs in this country....

their grand daddy was Maudoodi... who wrote `Ishtrakiat and Islam`... and America bought and published millions .... of its copies... making this narrowminded fanatic a very rich mullah... their chachu was Mufti Mahmood... that B@stard who tried to destabilize Pakistan in the name of Nizam-e-Mustafa, allied with the very suspicious Khan family and the NAP who had been declaring themselves secular but chose to bring down the democratic nationalist government of Bhutto hand in glove with the Mullahs...

and the same Mufti mahmood seered Maulana Fazlur Rahman... another CRIME against Humanity.... the famous `Mullah Diesel` who is more famous for his illegitimate diesel permits in exchange for political support to the ruling party...

These B@Stard mullahs ... who perpetuated ZiaulHaq`s regime... but today are opposed only in name to Musharraf... the same B@stard Mullahs who helped the Government pass the LFO... you think these Mullahs can`t be bought... they can be bought and sold for much less than they have been given. They will probably sell their daughters for even less....


-YLH

Leave it to shaheen sebhai and Urstruly to try and make capital out of a bad situation. The chowk staff is right in not printing an article written under the name of a popular personality like Che... We at Chowk are impatient people... including me... we always jump to the conclusion that there is some grand conspiracy that the chowk staff is involved in. Sometimes we assume that they are working for RAW, sometimes ISI, and at other times the CIA...

Let us drop this stupidity.

This talk of how Shujaat will be better for Pakistan, and that he is a self-made ``urbanite`` (whatever that means) is a good omen, reminds me of the late 80s. That was the time when a young Harvard / Oxford graduate woman of good looks became the first elected Prime Minister in the Muslim world. There was talk of how she would turn around the wretched country, how her western education will suddenly prop up the decaying Pakistani society etc etc. There was an excitement in the air.

Merely a decade later, that woman is in exile on charges of extreme corruption, and for siphoning money and historic relics for her Surray Palace.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. For 57 years, we have continued t o use a failed methodology to obtain the same failed results.

Romair
I totally agree with you. But i would like to add two more names, Humanyon Akhtar and Ijaz-ul-Haq. They all fall in the same category, a club of mediocores who have no credentials to lead these ministries.
Without any legitimate business, these people have millions of dollars in their account, and their only goal in life is to become the prime minister from the back door.
Listen these guys when they talk about public issues, you be laughing.
I am sure there are many great people in pakistan who are more qualified and competent than these yuppies.

Regards.

Romair # 31 - I agree with NHK regarding Awais Laghari`s qualifications for minister of S&T. Incidentally him and I went to the same university in upstate New York. I found him to be very ``un-wadera`` like and rather down to earth. He might be inexperienced in IT, but has the right atitude to learn the ropes and perhaps make some bold decisions.

#32 by stuka

“Can I infer from your comment that Congress is showing MORE maturity then BJP in dealing with Pakistan? If so, why? Also, what is your opinion about the initial missteps by Natwar Singh?”

Doublespeak! Not from me. I am a straight shooter.

Congress and BJP cater to two different constituencies and Congress is far more comfortable in dealing w/Pakistan as its support is in groups that are not dogmatically averse to working with Pakistan. Plus, it has more experience in finding some workable solutions with Pakistan after having years of give and take with the Pakistani army and the Bureaucracy. BJP certainly lacked that insight.

History is full of missteps between Pakistan and India- One more would not hurt that much. The success is in finding channels to quickly recover from the missteps. That happened this time around.

The dream of a civilian dominated society in Pakistan now depends so heavily on India and the US that any maturity Indians can show would be helpful. The right wing in India and Pakistan are different. In Pakistan the right wing is militaristic and the military political. The rhetorical exchanges with India help the rightist in Pakistan, and India can eliminate it w/o jeopardizing its national interests. The US is putting enough pressure on Pakistan to tone down rhetoric to not allow the rightwing to hide behind anti-Indianism.
By continually showing maturity, India can certainly help Pakistan move towards civilian rule in future.

malik99 -- Romair --
what we don`t know is that ` Awais Laghari` was ( don`t knwo about now) was involved in car smuggling gang and was once caught `red handed` in Bibi`s period where bibi asked him and his father that ` Bhai Saab, bacha acha hai parha likha hai why don`t you ask him to go into politics instead` --
a fact which is often ignored... or people don`t know about!

........ wha .... what happened ? ............. what`s all this noise about? .... why is manto so upset? ............. mangoes?........ i know, i know ........nobody likes sindhris - we have to wait for tha dosehri season .......... no, it is not the mangoes?......... mutton is over 200 a kilo and chicken went to 75 and it costs 5000 a month to keep one air conditioner running?.......... who cares, the poor can eat daal for all we care and, allah kay fazal say, we have four split units humming day and night ..........who is this awais leghari guy and what`s he doing running s&t? ........ he went to rochester, that is a pretty hard s&t school so he must have learnt something, even though the last time i went to dg khan i didn`t see any evidence of s&t.............

............. so it is the usual suspects playing musical chairs again - this time they are trying to make sure shaukat aziz gets to win when the army band stops playing and the military estate services show up to take away the chairs ................

............. this is a non-event ............. a real sleeper, if you ask me ..........zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Mantolives,
I agree.

Cheerios

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There are certain contradictions need to be pointed out.
First of all I would like to ask gentlemen criticizing ministers x, y & z for heading ministries without formal competence that what formal degrees Mr. Musharraf have to lead the country of 140 million?

What job would a Pakistani general of infantry, armour or artillery would get in any multi-national on the grounds of his academic accomplishments? At the most a head watchman with few guards under his supervision.

Mohammad Ali Jinnah, to whom most of our fellow countrymen consider an ultimate politician and statesman, was just a barrister- technically undergraduate.
Only a fool would argue about the importance of formal education but in politics it is not (and should not) be the foremost requirement.

We don’t have a political science professor sitting in the Oval office.
Lula of Brazil is a former street vendor.
His minister for environment (a young lady) has not even to college.
Former Polish president was an electrician. I can go on and on.
Why go so far.
Mr. Romair has more than 2000 replies on this forum – without having any degree in essay writing.

There is a huge difference between popular politics and meritocracy or technocracy.
On the contrary, sometimes an outsider with no pre-hand biases is in a far better position to bring about deeper changes.

Please, note what I am writing is also AT THE MOST just another aspect of the much larger story. There are very few, if any hard and fast rules and universal truths in this imperfect world.
The only point is that normally, it is naïve to say the least, to exclude one angle for the other and/or come up with sweeping observations.
All the best
Baba Jee