Leaders & Leaders

At least I am fed up of listening to the incessant rhetoric and harangues from the highest to the lowest leaders of the PPP  eulogizing ZAB and/or BB  just for the sake of praising them on each and every occasion whether in context or out of context! Anything they do (though frankly not much) for the public good is always extolled to be in accordance with the vision and wishes of the late Shaheeds - one or the other or the both!  Don’t they have anything of their own to offer to the people?  Will they ever grow up to be able to conceive or visualize something  good for the country all by themselves or will they always keep us and themselves reminding of the ZAB and the BB?  It is comical to watch BB’s picture placed dutifully and cautiously on a table (at times not bigger the size of the picture itself) so that it remains prominently visible throughout the interview given by these leaders – whether the baby Bilawal or the stalwart Amin Faheem – what to talk of the hubby President perching it on the UN General Assembly podium!  Has anyone  in the history of the UN GA ever done so?

Whether they realize it or not, such cult worshiping goes against them.  They are living under the shadows of the Shaheeds and martyrs – a shadow like that of the proverbial banyan tree that doesn’t let anything grow under it.  No one takes such pigmies seriously, on the contrary consider them to be void of any vision, planning and leading the people. It is time they showed some mettle of their own and proved themselves to be capable of leading the nation from the front and not through the stilts of the shaheeds.

Col. Riaz Jafri (Retd)