Bajwa, having screwed Pakistan good and proper, has moved into his new house. And without loss of time, he has embarked on an exercise to repair his reputation.
For this purpose, he invited the already charmed T.V anchor, Javed Choudhary, to his place to charm him all over again. And Javed Choudhary, the history buff who often makes up history on the go, did get suitably charmed. Instead of quizzing the general on how the plot of land on which his new house stood was regularized, he chose to inform us about how spotlessly clean the house was, and how some affordable antiques were so tastefully hung or placed all over it. And then he regaled us with the disarming manner in which the general dunked his cake rusks in his cup of tea before downing them.
How the quaintness of this tale was expected to mollify the millions whose hunger has gone up twofold in the last nine months, only Bajwa and Javed Choudhary would know.
If people have any real concern about their reputations, there is only one way to keep them in good order. And that is not to allow dirt to settle on them, rather than wallow in dirt and then depend on a good cleaning job to bring out the shine.
Bajwa should have kept himself aware of the gatherings at the house of his father-in-law cum mentor every evening, for which scotch was often supplied by some rich business people.
When you use borrowed scotch to spark off conviviality, you have to pay back the suppliers. And there lies the blossom of corruption for all to see.
So when Bajwa made it convenient for Nawaz Sharif to flee the country at the instigation of his mentor, he already had an established reputation for doing favours in exchange for handouts.
A PERSON WHO DOES FAVOURS FOR MONEY WILL NEVER DO ONE FOR FREE.
So there is absolutely no doubt in the minds of many that Nawaz Sharif paid his way out. And we know the beneficiaries. What was paid out is not likely to remain hidden long.
In these circumstances Bajwa can only have his reputation repaired as suggested by a village parable about the grave robber. The account is as follows:
There was this village grave robber. He used to open freshly dug graves, rob the shrouds off the corpses, and sell them in the market. The business was not exactly a thriving one, but allowed him to get by respectably.
But as he got older, his conscience began to get the better of him, and he began to worry about his reputation.
And so he began to admonish and then beseech his son that after he passed away, the son should conduct himself in a manner whereby the father would be well remembered.
So after he died, the son decided to carry on the family business of robbing graves. But he did not stop at merely divesting the corpse of its shroud. He went further. After taking the shroud off the corpse, he would drive a stake through its backside as if affixing his personal signature to the crime.
It is then that the villagers began remembering his father with words of acceptability, and even kindness. The father was basically a gentleman, they began saying. He merely robbed graves to feed himself. “But look at his son, the beast,” they began to say, ” and the horrible things he does in the act of thievery! No respect for the dead. None whatsoever!”
And thus, the late grave robber came to be well remembered on account of the doings of the son.
Bajwa took the country to the very edge. Retirement denied him the chance to push it over. That chance now resides with Gen Asim Munir. If he pushes Pakistan over, that will be the end of Pakistan. This will Bajwa’s redeem Bajwa’s name at the cost of Asim Munir. But if Asim decides to pull Pakistan back, the country will be saved, but Bajwa’s repair job on his reputation will have become so much wasted effort.
We don’t have more than a couple of months to wait in order to definitively know what Gen Asim Munir is going to abandon, and what it is that he will save.
But the path he embarks on will become very clear in just about a fortnight.