PTI’s Lahore Jalsa was announced for Sep 21st. News that the very thought of this had angered Mariam Safdar no end, began to spread fast. By Sep 18 lists of the usual suspects began to be rolled out once again and arrests and abductions began to go into high gear. The high dudgeon of a seething Mariam had begun calling out for satisfaction even before an act of offence had been committed.
The evolution of Mariam Safdar has been a thing of wonder. Thinking about her, I’ve often wondered what it was that broadened her horizons more–the constant company of her father or her early parting from her husband. At all events, the end product that we come to see was the amalgam of a richly powdered narcissistic woman hissing with arrogance, kept in balance by stupidity and overweening ambition.
One never had doubts of Mariam’s arrogance, nor of her warped mind which led her to set up the dirty video industry of Pakistan, but her stupidity was a national secret till she exposed it voluntarily.
Arrogance is bad enough, but together with stupidity and power, it can become a mix for lethal malice. This we can see in the heads of our two most powerful institutions today, Asim Munir and Qazi Isa.
By the time Mariam became Chief Minister of Punjab, most Pakistanis were already either in a state of perpetual depression or acute agitation. To alleviate this, dirty videos wouldn’t do, so she resorted to regaling them by playing the clown herself. On April 24, 2024, she went to take the salute at a passing out parade of a contingent of Punjab Police. Decked out in full police uniform, [boots and all], marching with a delicious swing of her rump, she was a sight for sore eyes, and a lift for languid expectations. Behind her marched her dutiful sidekick, Mariam Aurangzeb, dripping with the fulsomeness expected of her. A prisoner of her compulsion to look attractive, the best that could be said of her was that she came off as mildly unprepossessing, and even this would be a concession of undeserved kindness. When was it last that one heard of a woman being given employment mostly for her not entirely agreeable looks? One gets the feeling that without Mariam Aurangzeb as a foil, Mariam Safdar would not look half as comely as she sometimes deludes us into believing.
The Caesars of Rome had to ensure affordable bread to keep the plebs from rioting. And if bread was not available, they kept them entertained with circuses. Not being able to provide bread to the people, most of the flour having been converted into cash by the Zardari and Sharif families and sent abroad for safekeeping, Mariam decided to resort to providing circuses. It is because of her innate generosity, always errant, that she decided to play the clown herself. Few leaders could be singled out who have sacrificed personal dignity to keep their people in good cheer.
Because of the huge popularity achieved by her first performance as a swinging policewoman, she repeated the act on May 17, this time in the black uniform of special police squads. And this was even better.
The last time this happened was when the family’s original benefactor, Governor Jillani, had Mian Nawaz Sharif [then a minister in the Punjab Government] decked out in full police uniform to take the salute at a similar parade. From that day on the Mian was so smitten by uniforms, particularly by the idea of having a uniformed army chief grovel at his feet, that he has had to endure more than one fall trying to bend his hand-picked army chiefs into the desired posture. Repeated frustrations probably inclined him to pass the baton on to his daughter.
She used the baton with great mischief, because she did not have the power to use it with the malice she craved. This power came to her when she was elevated to Chief Minister, of Punjab. This happened when the elder thugs of the Zardari and Sharif families, having looted the wealth of Pakistan and parking it abroad, thought that it was about time to let their next generations have their way with this unfortunate land–to break hopes that still remained, and to grab what had eluded the clutches of their elders. One would have thought they had already stolen so much that their progeny would remain well-fed for centuries to come, so that by now they would have overcome their lust for theft! But then one is reminded of Aristotle who had observed well over 2000 years ago that all addictions are sated by feeding them what the addiction hungers for, except that of wealth. In this case, the more you feed it, the sharper becomes the need to accumulate more. That is why the Zardaris and the Sharifs will never know satisfaction.
Returning to the subject, by Sep 20 Mariam had put in place all plans for mischief to disrupt the Lahore Jalsa after having allowed it. Arrests and abductions were speeded up and containers began to be put in place to block off all routes to an out-of-the-way venue allocated for the congregation. PTI was forced to accept no less than 43 conditions under which they were allowed to hold the Jalsa. Plans had been made to convert mischief into malicious conduct when PTI would inevitably break any one of these conditions. Plans were set in place for another false flag like that of May 9.
Concurrently with the above, “ten percent” Zardari signed an Ordinance designed to undermine Pakistan’s entire constitutional structure. This Ordinance empowers Qazi Isa [with a monkey of choice] to form Supreme Court benches to hear cases. These benches will be so designed by him that every outreach to the Court, to disallow actions by the government which were contrary to the Constitution, will be quelched. Thus the Constitution will be entirely dismantled, courts will be robbed of their powers, which will be shifted elsewhere, and Pakistan will be subjected to rule by the executive without check or balance. Sitting behind and on top of the executive will be the army chief, who will become the fountainhead of total power. He will have attained this position entirely because he has the monopoly on disciplined ranks and rifles. By using this power derived from the gun, he will leave no option to the people of Pakistan but to use rifles themselves to hold him accountable. Many years later after many deaths and the expenditure of much blood another Hamood ur Rehman Commission will be formed. This will determine who was responsible for the breakup of that half of Pakistan which still remained after 1971.
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