COAS Gen Asim Munir must account himself lucky man, for he had a meeting with PTI Chairman Gohar Ali Khan and KP CM Ali Amin Gandapur recently. Now Barrister Gohar is a gentleman, and meeting him is not a particularly strenuous event, but meeting Ali Amin can be a trying experience.
That is, provided that one does meet him. If one throws back one’s mind to the November 26 D-Chowk rally, all that many saw of Ali Amin was a cloud of dust disappearing into the horizon. Anybody who can claim to have seen more of him than a clean pair of heels is one of a select few.
One of the problems with meeting him is not knowing whether he has been working on the Liver of the Century. I mean, when you go for a meeting with him, there’s no knowing whether one will find him sitting on a sofa, or lying behind it. Even if he is not sleeping off his potations, dialogue with him is not necessarily linear or conventionally logical.
According to General Munir, he told the delegation to raise political issues at the relevant forum, and to stick to the issue of security. Normally, Ali Amin would not be in a position to raise any issue, political or security-oriented, especially in the mornings, when he would find the light increased his headache. That would be a negotiation either never to be forgotten, or to be forgotten at once; if Ali Amin was to represent the PTI, and Sharjeel Memon of the PPP.
Ali Amin and Gohar Ali Khan are not the only people in the PTI however. Sher Afzal Marwat is also in it. Though under a cloud. He has been issued a show cause notice, and party loyalists are throwing broad hints that he was being punished because of his closeness to the agencies. Marwat came to fame because of his fisticuffs against a PML-N Senator during a TV programme. He subsequently became an MNA, and is accused of having lobbied for the post of Leader of the Opposition. He has also pointed out Ali Amin’s failings as KP CM, and his failure to lead the protests for Imran’s release successfully.
Of course, some have said that the real problem is that Marwat is becoming popular within the PTI cadres, who obviously hope that he will repeat his TV performance, and maybe beat up somebody. Imran hates it, it seems, anyone becoming more popular than him. Well, so does any other political leader. But why did he get rid of Sufi Sal, the Salman Ahmad of Junoon,
I see they’ve moved the US Presidential inauguration indoors, and by the time these notes are in your hands, gentle reader, he will have been sworn in. There was a warning of exceptionally cold weather in Washington, which is bad news in January. I suppose no one wanted a repeat of the Presidency of William Henry Harrison, whose March 1841 inauguration took place in blustery weather. He not only rode to the venue through the weather, but then delivered what is still the longest inaugural address ever, and then plunged into an exhausting round of social and official activity, which lasted for a month when he got caught in the rain while out, not changing into dry clothes on return. He got a chill which killed him in dust. He was 68. Trump is 78. So no risks should be taken, should they?
