05-15-2010, 11:41 AM
Just as the water in the new lake in Hunza is rising and forcing people to vacate their homes, it is also so with other underground rumblings in Pakistan which, if you have sensitive ears, are different sounds to what has been heard in the past 60 years. It seems that most people who live here sense that the end is neigh to the way things always were. Those demanding cha-nge can feel it coming. The process has begun and is now unstoppable. It may take some years to take its final shape, nonetheless, it has started. A demarcation of domain is being made by the Supreme Court, the media and the Executive. People are watching and supporting those who are taking the moral and ethical stand.
Take the case of Jamshaid Dasti, the same guy who was unseated by the Supreme Court for having a fake degree and, yet, who was unsur-prisingly given a party ticket by the party in power to contest the by-elections. It does not stop here. He also gets the prime minister to address his election rally and has the audacity to claim that they are only accountable to the electorate and no other court. In times gone by, this behaviour and high-handedness would have been accepted without much demur barring an odd poem by Habib Jalib or a comment in the press. But it caused quite a furore this time. The print and the electronic media had a field day and the prime minister had to respond in Parliament to his canvassing for Dasti. Even though the new law has removed the degree requirement, it cannot be taken to mean that those who used deception in the past should either continue to be our lawmakers and be allowed to contest elections.
This becomes all the more pertinent with the record of Jamshaid Dasti’s stand on the bill protecting women from sexual harassment at the workplace. He termed the sexual harassment bill as an insult to Islamic society and sided with the JUI, who said that the passage of the bill would only lead to spread of vulgarity!
Take the case of Jamshaid Dasti, the same guy who was unseated by the Supreme Court for having a fake degree and, yet, who was unsur-prisingly given a party ticket by the party in power to contest the by-elections. It does not stop here. He also gets the prime minister to address his election rally and has the audacity to claim that they are only accountable to the electorate and no other court. In times gone by, this behaviour and high-handedness would have been accepted without much demur barring an odd poem by Habib Jalib or a comment in the press. But it caused quite a furore this time. The print and the electronic media had a field day and the prime minister had to respond in Parliament to his canvassing for Dasti. Even though the new law has removed the degree requirement, it cannot be taken to mean that those who used deception in the past should either continue to be our lawmakers and be allowed to contest elections.
This becomes all the more pertinent with the record of Jamshaid Dasti’s stand on the bill protecting women from sexual harassment at the workplace. He termed the sexual harassment bill as an insult to Islamic society and sided with the JUI, who said that the passage of the bill would only lead to spread of vulgarity!