The painful drama of Sardar Tanvir Ilyas being disqualified for contempt of court as Prime Minister of AJK seemed tied in a strange way to his former Kashmir Affairs Minister Ali Amin Gandapur.
It has been disclosed by highly unreliable sources that the AJK Supreme Court did not object so much to his remarks, as that they were made by someone with his mustachios, and it was on the table that if he shaved them off, he would have his appeal accepted and would not be removed as AJK PM. That job means a lot to him, for he got the job only after ousting Abdul Qayyum Niazi. Well, live by the sword, die by the sword. Now Qayyum Niazi was hirsute, but did not have mustachios as contemptuous of the superior judiciary as Sardar Tanvir.
While Ali Amin Gandapur is not in any court trouble, he has been arrested. The PTI foot soldiers are protesting this arrest. Rumours that they are protesting why it took so long are unfounded. The PTI has never wanted him arrested. He might have harboured the wish, because the optics of not being arrested were not good.
However, it seemed wrong when pictures appeared on the net of him crying. Those pictures, it turns out, were fake. Thus the rumours that Ali Amin was crying because the authorities had threatened to give him a haircut were untrue. Imagine Ali Amin with a buzzcut. He would hide it with a cowboy hat, which is what he would like to have. He has the sort of hairstyle that goes with an overcoat and full boots, as worn by the villains in Urdu movies. He favours the PTI look, which involves wearing Peshawari chappals, and leaving the straps undone.
Don’t underestimate Ali Amin. If the PTI ever forms a government, and Ali Amin is in the National Assembly or Senate, he’ll probably be Interior Minister, not Sh Rashid. ‘Bell’ Sh Rashid himself has got a hair story of his own, his toupee, which is painfully obvious. Previous holders of that portfolio have included Ch Nisar Ali, who invested more on his toupee, and Ch Shujaat and Ahsan Iqbal, who showed off bald pates without any concern for those with weak eyesight or weak hearts. The present holder, Rana Sanaullah, is decent enough to have some male-pattern balding, but he does not flaunt it, as the Sharif brothers used to do`, nor has he tried to hide it with toupees or transplants.
Well, at least there’s been no discrimination. Ali Wazir went through his long imprisonment without being subjected to the indignity of a crewcut. That means Mian Nawaz Sharif, whose late mother insisted that his hair was beautiful, need not fear for his lush locks at the hands of the jail authorities, no matter where his platelet count goes.
Let’s take a look at the USA, where a very bad example was set, when a bank employee pulled out a gun and offed. Five colleagues, injuring nine people including three cops, as well as getting killed himself. That was a variation on that old American classic, the school shooting.
I thought bankers were these overweight bald guys with stuffy expressions. I didn’t know they were these wild-eyed fellows in the corner who occasionally emitted a wild laugh, all the while caressing an assault rifle (The Louisville shooting was done with an AR15 assault rifle). Louisville is a violent place. I had previously associated it with its most famous son, Muhammad Ali, who was initially called the Louisvbille Lip because of his verbal pyrotechnics. Well, Muhammad Ali has passed on, as has his brand of mayhem, which only had light gloves to do the deed, not AR15s.
The last picture will have to be of Mr Justice Qazi Faez Isa, who was at the Constitutional Convention, which irritated a lot of people. With Parliament and the Supreme Court at daggers drawn, maybe he shouldn’t have gone. But then, he was invited. And so were the other judges. After all, the passing of the Constitution is something they should celebrate as much as politicians.
Actually, we should all be celebrating, shouldn’t we? The Constitution belongs to us all, doesn’t it? Is it supposed to be for us, or the politicians or the Supreme Court? Maybe the answer lies with the people who twice held it in abeyance, but did not abrogate it. What do they like about it that they didn’t about the two previous ones? But more of that later. Perhaps.
