Former US President Donald Trump has been charged in Georgia with trying to overturn the 2020 election, and charges have been more normally used in organized crime, such as racketeering and conspiracy. Now Imran would have preferred a longer sentence, if only they had used the right charges. Those charges of watch-theft are likely to bring him down in the estimate of his fellow villagers.
Now when Ch Zahoor Elahi was hauled up on Zulfikar Ali Bhutto on a charge of buffalo theft, that was not something that demeaned one in the eyes of rural society. Even now, rural society shows a distressing sense of meum and tuum as far as livestock is concerned. Such new-fangled ideas as misappropiating or misdeclaring the proceeds from a sale would not create much of a revulsion of feeling. Imran would probably like a charge where he could be imagined going about the place doing violence, with someone like Ali Amin Gandapur in tow.
Now if someone goes to jail for a multiple murder, that is probably going to enhance his respect in the village. There’re probably some in Garhi Khuda Bux itself, who believe that Bhutto did order the murder for which he was hanged, and honour him for it, though they would be puzzled by his hanging. Abettors usually get only a life sentence, which means release in 14 years’ time.
Of course, Imran might find himself in more trouble yet, on trial by a military court for the attacks on military installations and memorials on May 9. Matters seem worse because his nephew Hassaan Niazi has been captured d. Hassaan arguably performed the most symbolic of the actions of May 9, by waving the trousers of the Corps Commander Lahore to a crowd of PTI supporters. I don’t think I can imagine anything more schoolboyish. The looting of the kitchen was perhaps more childish, but only by a whisker.
And maybe that is the spirit inspiring Imran. Maybe he’s just a 71-year-old schoolboy, maybe he’s still just a child. The unfortunate part is that a lot of Pakistanis expected him to solve their problems. At least Anwarul Haq Kakar was not acting like a schoolboy, and the caretaker Cabinet he inducted was neither too wonkish or too schoolboyish.
The Ecuadorian presidential election was recently thrown into turmoil by the assassination of a candidate. He was campaigning against corruption. That meant he was campaigning against the drug cartels. The drug there is cocaine, for the US market. Well, at least he wasn’t thrown into jail for corruption. On the other hand, Imran hasn’t been assassinated.
Well, nobody was assassinated in Jaranwala. Very thin consolation that was, though, for the attacks on the churches there mark a dangerous sign. Desecration of the Holy Quran seems to have become a Scandinavian thing, with another incident in Denmark, by the same guy as burnt one in Stockholm. Very bad, and truly condemnable. But does that mean churches must be razed? There was a deliberate movement about 1000 years ago in Cordova seeking martyrdom by blaspheming against the Holy Prophet (PBUH). The blasphemers were executed, and there was no apology for that. But there is no record of any blasphemy in response against Christian prophets or saints. Churches continued to be protected as before.
FOOTNOTE TO THESE NOTES: I had a funny realisation. We have managed to make ‘disappear’ a transitive verb. When I was a young shaver, learning the ins and outs of the Enlish language (which I still haven’t done), I always looked on ‘disappear’ as an intransitive verb, which had no object, just a subject. Now ‘disappearing’ is done to others. It doesn’t just happen. People ‘disappear’ other people. It’s not as if its an invention of anybody here. Or even a copying of a technique in the War On Terror, though admittedly where once terrorists disappeared, now it’s Baloch young people.
Has anyone heard of the desparecidos, the ‘disappeared ones’, all those young people who disappeared in Latin America in the war against communism back in the 1970s?
