Islamabad
Reverts to its Wheeling Dealing, Money Making Mode
By
M T Butt
ISLAMABAD: The good old days of making money, buying influence,
using political clout, making deals, plea-bargaining to get sins
forgiven and acting as touts have returned to Islamabad ever since
General Musharraf has declared that all this was permissible under
the new concept of ‘Environmental Contradictions'.
The players, mostly political who enjoy the umbrella of the military
to provide all kinds of services, personal, political, financial
and sexual, find Islamabad a superb hunting ground where anything
under the world is possible, as long as the man at the top stays
happy. Some examples:
The Brajesh Mishra of General Musharraf has been
raking it in like there is going to be no tomorrow. He has left
the legendary Mr. 10 per cent way behind. And coincidentally,
he also shares Zardari’s taste in horses, though, not of
the Polo kind.
He
is into racing. Just the other day, Mush’s BM imported 10
of the prized breed from the UK paying Rs. 100,000 only as import
duty for the lot. Such horses normally carry at least 135 per
cent import duty each. He now owns as many as 54 such horses.
His
wife used to have just one school in the bad old days of pre-1999.
Now she owns as many as nine in Lahore. His detractors say that
he is only trying to keep the accountability hounds from catching
him at some future date when his friend and boss is not around
to look out for him.
He
is transferring the ‘loot’ into the horses and schools
so that those who would be looking to catch people with wealth
beyond their known means after the present military government
would be fooled.
He
is rumored to have set up a cartel of horse race bookies in Lahore,
though only one by the interesting name of Pappu, is known among
the Lahore race crowd to belong to M’s BM.
The
intriguing aspect is that this close buddy of the General is also
known to have joined up with the Hasnain Construction Company
which is believed to be getting all the lucrative government construction
contracts for a 10 per cent cut.
Earlier, the father-in-law OF Bilal Musharraf, Brig (Retd) Aftab
Siddiqui was a full partner in this company. But when rumors began
taking the rounds the General called Siddiqui in and told him
to get out of the partnership immediately. It was, it is believed,
after the departure of Siddiqui that Mush’s BM joined up.
So, some people believe that he may be fronting for Siddiqui.
Interestingly Siddiqui’s involvement in Hasnain was confirmed
by no one else but the owner of the company Sheikh Yusuf. In a
report published in Dawn of Sept 25, 2002, Sheikh Yousaf
explained this. Click
to Read Dawn Report
When asked as to how much his company had been helped by Brig
(Retd) Aftab Siddiqui, Yusuf said the gentleman had worked with
his company as a consultant. "It was originally agreed that
he would get two per cent of the profit from the project for 25
years, but since the project had been converted to a government
funded plan, Aftab Siddiqui was no longer with his company. The
cost of M-3 is Rs7 billion.”
“He,
however, said Mr Siddiqui had been paid for the 'services' which
he rendered, but refused to give more details... Everything was
documented, and the payments to Mr Siddiqui had been made through
checks the copies of which had been provided to a number of government
departments," he said, according to Dawn.
Our General has a taste for music. He is a great fan of Tina Sani
and enjoys her gazzals more than any thing else. So, the Foreign
Minister, Mian Khurshid Kasuri, a perceptive host in his own right,
wanting to win some extra points at the presidency, arranged at
his five star home, a five-hour Tina recital for the General.
As
luck would have it, the Prime Minister paid a visit to the General
the next day with his own complaints, the major being the fact
that he had to deal with so many coalition partners.
Life would be better for him, if the coalition partners and the
PML factions were to join in and form one single parliamentary
party inside the house, he suggested. Excellent, the General said.
“Do it, I am behind you on this.”
Says the PM: “I have already started talking to some of
them and Leghari is ready to merge his Millat party with the PML,
if he is given the foreign ministry.
"Given!"
shouts the General with visible glee. The job is his (Leghari’s)
as soon as he joins the PML, the General reinforces his support
to the idea. The next day, Leghari calls on the President and
announces his intentions to join the ruling Party. Excellent,
says the General, you can even become the Prime Minister, if you
do so.
Of course, Leghari cannot be both, the PM and the FM all at the
same time and perhaps he may not after all get even one of the
two in the final reckoning. Kasuri’s 5-hour Tina Sani sacrifice
is not supposed to go in vain.
Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain is a smarter cookie than Khurshid and
Jamali. So, as soon as Leghari goes public with his intention
to join the PML, the Chaudhry makes a quick move of his own, announcing
that his cousin, Pervaiz Elahi would be the next prime minister,
elections or no elections.
And
at the same time he advises Musharraf to use his influence to
get Leghari the job of the OIC secretary general. Musharraf has
already dumped Mushahid on the OIC, sending him up there as a
representative of Pakistan in the OIC council of Eminent Persons
which, is as useless a body as the parent organization itself.
The
task given to this body is to propose recommendations for restructuring
the OIC, which in other words means wrenching the organization
out from the clutches of the Arab potentates and bringing it under
the direct influence of the Pakistan Army and giving the ‘restructured’
OIC an ideological moorings based on that meaningless phrase coined
by none other than the general himself: Enlightened Moderation.
The
Americans have bought this phrase lock, stock and barrel, because
of their rudimentary knowledge about the subject itself.
The
general has coined another meaningless phrase - Environmental
Contradiction - to justify the presence of corrupt people in parliament
and the cabinet. He seems to be going one up on some of his predecessors
who in their enlightened ignorance had coined the terms - Strategic
Depth and Strategic Defiance.
There
are now reports that Saifur Rehman, the Accountability Czar of
Nawaz Sharif, has crossed over to General Musharraf and was actively
working to process the quick deportation of Shahbaz Sharif to
Saudi Arabia from Lahore.
According
to The Friday Times, Saifur Rehman never saw eye-to-eye
with Shahbaz Sharif. After the coup in 1999, Saif cooled his heels
in the clink for some time and his dubious dealings were scrutinized
by NAB and his bad loans called in.
TFT
said: “Our mole in Isloo tells us that all that has
changed.” Saif has apparently changed sides and gone over
to the government camp. He is doing his new masters’ bidding
and since the “ground reality has changed” so too
have Saif’s circumstances. We hear his cases are now being
looked upon “sympathetically” and his troubles with
the Musharraf government are a thing of the past.
