Can
Anyone See the General's Missing Clothes
By
Dr. Maqbool Halepota, MD
Special to the South Asia Tribune
ARIZONA,
USA, September 29: The current fiasco between General Musharraf
and the Washington Post reminds me of the story we used
to read as children. In this famous children’s fairy tale
a king parades the town naked, but no one has the courage to tell
him the truth, because they have all been fooled into thinking
that only the wise can see the special fabric the king is wearing,
that is until a child points out the obvious.
Similarly
our self appointed and army backed king has now been caught lying
through his nose but no one wants to point out the simple fact
that he is a liar because the whole world has been fooled into
thinking that he is truly an honest man, but due to the circumstances,
only the wisest among us can some how see his honesty and wisdom.
Despite the fact that this man in his six year tenure has taken
more U-turns, than all his predecessors put together in the entire
history of the country.
The
fact of the matter is that Musharaf’s very survival is based
on nothing else but fabrications and contradictions. For instance:
• Although he never takes his uniform off at home, he has
never been seen in it abroad.
• On the one hand he is the champion of enlightened moderation,
while at the same time he is constantly in bed with right wing
extremists.
• He constantly talks of transparency and good governance
while making a career of openly buying loyalties of corrupt politicians,
and appointing proclaimed murderers as governors of provinces,
and convicted criminals as ministers in his cabinet.
• He presents himself as the ultimate Patriot for whom Pakistan
comes before anything else; at the same time he is the patron
in chief of the most fascist ethnic organization in the history
of Pakistan, whose leader has been openly questioning the very
basis for the creation of the country.
• He portrays himself as the most courageous soldier while
backtracking and cowing in any time he is called to show any guts.
• He preaches the importance of having only literate people
in the assemblies and government while personally picking individuals
with fraudulent degrees to be ministers.
Although he claims never to lie, but he probably holds the record
for being caught lying on tape, starting from his infamous promise
to the whole nation and the world about taking off his uniform
to his latest derogatory remarks about his own daughters, sisters
and mothers, i.e. the women of Pakistan.
But
the more important issue at hand is his state of mind. I am sure
he fully realizes that these days the interviews of all heads
of states, legitimate or illegitimate, are fully recorded for
obvious reasons. Thus what was he thinking when he denied making
the above statement. Either he must have been totally out of his
mind or actually had no re-collection of his own interview. That
is a distinct possibility when one considers the fact that the
alcoholic beverages he is served abroad are probably unadulterated,
and thus much more potent than the one’s he consumes at
home.
Which
explains all his off the cuff remarks, from his famous brag about
Kashmir during his Agra Yatra, with which he single handedly
doomed the entire summit, till his latest show of useless verbosity,
which has completely marred our image in front of the whole world?
Who can now stop others from calling us names, when our own, self
declared savior is accusing our women of wanting to sell sex for
visas abroad.
A
brief review of the history of the great general will show that
he is most prone to these bouts of verbal diarrhea when he is
abroad and probably has a serum alcohol level well above legal
intoxication. Thus one does not have to be a genius to know that
the general is not only a cheap date, but also a pathologic liar.
But
the million dollar questions that need to be answered are:
•
Is he fit to represent our country at any level?
• What kind of future can we expect for the country under
his dictatorship?
The
writer is a Pakistani Oncologist currently working in Arizona,
USA
