Flavour of the month
Our mole in The Great Khan’s inner sanctum says his favourites keep changing. The flavour of the month these days is the young economy tsar, who almost replaced Doc IMF, but was then passed over for that multiple members committee. As if ministries are run by committees! Young HA (would-be economy tsar) would do well to remember that The Great Khan is notoriously fickle. Doesn’t he know how A Sad Age first lost his job, back in the day? One minute The Khan was vehemently denying that the gent was being shown the door – asking his mins to defend A Sad Age on telly – and the next minute, he was gone.
Like that only
It’s like that only, with The Great Khan. They say he flies into his office via heli at 11.30 am, “works” till 4 pm, and then off he goes. Thereafter, it’s government by WhatsApp, sundry chats with pals included, and watching all the talk shows on telly. This is when his burgeoning team of mins and SAPMs gets an earful for not “managing the media”, viz. fire fighting and fending off criticism for their disastrous governance. Then they go off in a flurry and do just that – media management for most of their working days. It’s no wonder that the ship of state is adrift.
The new normal
Obviously, the buck stops at No 1’s desk and he gets blamed for the regime’s ineptitude. While he occasionally chaffs at the bit, letting off some steam here and there, there is no real threat to The Great Khan. But the harmless letting off of steam – Sheeda Tully is not their candidate, they wanted PK of KPK. They got rid of Paradise Lover from the centre but what can they do about her ascension to Takht Lahore, they are relentless in their critique but they have no executive power etc. etc. – sends the pundits into a flurry of excitement. They start chattering about “same page gone” and “deals with opposition” – until a few weeks down the line when everything subsides and it’s back to the new normal again.
