Boot-in-Mouth

"You must understand the environment in Pakistan. This has become a money making concern. A lot of people say if you want to go abroad and get a visa for Canada or citizenship and be a millionnaire, get yourself raped."

In case anyone is wondering as to who would have the gall to make such an insensitive, vulgar, and repugnant statement, it was our very own President of Pakistan, General Pervaiz Musharraf to Washington Post reporter, Glen Kessels, during an interview.

The General, like all men in power who aren’t answerable to anyone must not have realized just how offensive his comments were and just how stupid they make him sound. It’s the stuff that Bush-isms are made of as the good General must be observing. True to form the PR team (if you can call them that) jumped into action stating that General Musharraf had been misquoted. Whew, that was close they must have thought.

Not quite as on the 18th of September, Glen Kessels who interviewed the General, told the BBC Urdu service that he had taped the interview and that he had quoted him verbatim. You see in the wake of several reporting disasters, publications like the Washington Post are extremely tight when it comes to quoting and documenting the facts. If they make a mistake, they run the transcripts and if they got it wrong, they run a retraction.

Obviously when General Musharraf denied having made the statement, Glen Kessels editors must have hauled him in. At which point he must have produced his tapes, played them for his editors, sat back in his seat and smiled. The fact that the Washington Post has not retracted means that it was said.

And if the General is to be believed then he should prove it and sue the Washington Post for libel. I will bet on it that it wont come to that and like many Pakistani leaders who have thundered about “suing” for libel, President Musharraf too will join the ranks of Pakistani politicians who didn’t.

What possesses the son of a mother, the husband of a wife, and the father of a daughter to say something as crass as the leader of our country just did in Washington? I wonder what General Musharraf’s mother, wife, and daughter, had to say to him when they read the statement?

As a Pakistani, I like many others, was ashamed of the President of Pakistan for bringing dishonor to the entire nation when he spoke in a manner not befitting a head of state, not befitting a gentlemen, and definitely not befitting an officer of the Armed Forces.

They say change comes from the top, and if the leader of our nation espouses such attitudes what chance do we have of changing anything at the lower levels? People close to General Musharraf say that he makes quick decisions and has the tendency of “firing from the hip” because of his being from the Armed Forces.

Maybe he should look at Army Officers from the “old school”, which in my book is the only school, as examples and ask them to tutor him in becoming a better Statesman. I am sure the transition from being Chief of the Army to the Head of State is a tough one, but now that the Armed Forces of this country has done it so many times, I am surprised there isn’t a course taught on the subject at the Staff College in Quetta.

Maybe they should add “Public Speaking 101” to the list of courses taught. “Firing from the hip” works fine when one is speaking to the “jawans” of the Pakistan Army, but the whole world is not a parade ground, and we’re not all soldiers.

General Musharraf, probably at his advisors behest, has it in for “NGO’s”, but the reality is that if NGO’s did not exist in this country, whatever little progress that has happened would not have happened. If the State were to do its job to provide education, health care, legal aid, care for rape victims, clean drinking water etc., the need for non-governmental agencies to provide these essential services would not arise.

A posse of advisors close to the President and PM decry NGO’s as foreign-funded trouble makers who are tarnishing Pakistan’s “image” by bringing up issues at international forums. This is the mentality of morons who have no clue what they’re talking about apart from the fact that other people are doing their jobs and compensating for their incompetence.

The very fact that Pakistan’s social services are being provided by private citizens and NGO’s and not the State should be examined by the powers that be. Like any other sector, NGO’s too have problems and their agendas but then who in this country doesn’t?

Speaking to the American Jewish Congress, President Musharraf stated that while it takes courage to confront, it takes more courage to reconcile. If the General can put forth the olive branch to both the Indians and the Israelis, I think it is high time he practiced what he preaches within the country.

General Musharraf has shocked and offended every Pakistani citizen within and outside Pakistan, and he should apologize for it. What he said was factually wrong and offensive to any citizen of the world, and the longer this controversy plays out the worse for the “image” of Pakistan. If he does then all of this will go away, if he doesn’t he will have lost standing and respect with his own support base within and outside Pakistan.