The City-State of Lahore
Whose of us in the media who have been rooting for Mian Nawaz Sharif since his first dismissal as PM in 1993 are guilty of helping the PML talk their way out of self-created controversies, turning a blind eye towards Mian Nawaz Sharif’s very deliberate extreme rightward shift towards fundamentalism which is at great variance with his moderate label and rhetoric that forms the mainstream of Islam. We have also propagated from various media pulpits that the PM holds the national interest supreme, even at his personal cost, whereas the bitter truth may well be that he stays well within the parameters of a rather myopic annunciation of democracy, of the Lahorites, by the Lahorites and for the Lahorites. For President, the PM has opted for “a clean, God fearing Muslim” to be what is very clearly an “instrument of convenience”. It is quite possible that the PM did not know of the Tarar connection to the “Ahrar” Party, opposed both to the concept of Pakistan and the Quaid-e-Azam. Possibly that is why ANP chose to be his proposer since Ahrar was allied to Congress pre-partition. The PM is now being forced to defend him instead of basking in praise at his choice, after all what does Justice Rafiq Tarar bring to the Presidency except a known loyalty to the Sharifs (particularly the eldest Sharif), a keen legal mind and an enhanced fundamentalist bent, again in keeping with the rather extreme views of the Sharif family patriarch? Not many people know that in the competition for 10 Sessions Judges, Rafiq Tarar was eleventh but that he was accommodated anyway, so much for alleged competency. The method of selection left much to be desired, almost the entire Federal Cabinet knew nothing of this darkest of dark horses till he was presented before them as a fait accompli less than 15 hours before the filing of nomination papers closed. And we call this sham a democracy? A very wrong message has been sent out to the entire country as well as to the rest of Punjab, the world beyond Model Town extends only to the other end of the Motorway, in Islamabad. Very much like Rome, Athens and Carthage, Lahore is the centre of this universe and damn the consequences to the Federation as long as the city’s inhabitants thrive and prosper. As a city-state, Lahore rules over several disparate and ethnically distinct provinces (since Governors are appointed by the Federation, should we call them Satraps?)
