Hamid criticises PTI’s legal team

Hamid criticises PTI’s legal team


ISLAMABAD: Report of the inquiry commission constituted to investigate allegations that the last general elections had been rigged has not only dealt a blow to credibility of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) but also exposed fissures within its ranks.
Commenting on the report that rejected all the charges, senior Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf leader and lawyer Hamid Khan has blamed his party’s legal team for the fiasco.
Talking to Dawn on Sunday, he alleged that “the party has been hijacked by the remnants of the (government of) former military ruler Gen Pervez Musharraf”.
He went on to claim that a conspiracy had been hatched to destroy the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf by the “forces of status quo”.
When asked to identify the people who, according to him, were behind the conspiracy, he named Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf general secretary Jahangir Tareen. “Don’t you know that he was a minister during the Musharraf regime?”

“The party has been hijacked by remnants of the (government) of former military ruler Gen Pervez Musharraf”


He alleged that his party’s chairman, Imran Khan, had not been advised properly by his team and it had agreed “on wrong terms of reference” for the inquiry commission.
Hamid Khan, who appeared unhappy with his party’s leadership for not consulting him over matters relating to the commission, said the reference prepared by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s legal team was ”wrong”.
Saying that agents of status quo had joined the party in a large number after October 2011, he vowed to revive the old Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf which comprised “ideological people” who wanted to bring about “real change”.
“We will Insha Allah cleanse the party of people who are damaging it under a conspiracy,” he said.
Meanwhile, the PTI chairman, in his messages on social media, praised senior lawyer Abdul Hafeez Pirzada and his team for their efforts during the proceedings of the commission.
“I want to thank Pirzada’s team, esp Sikandar, for their hard work and passion. I have the greatest respect and admiration for him and the heroic way in which he fought PTI’s case before the judicial commission.
“Thanks also go to our PTI lawyers and volunteers, esp Ishaq Khakwani, for putting in marathon hours of work with unflinching commitment,” he said in Twitter messages.
Hamid Khan was apparently sidelined by the party leadership during the days of its Islamabad sit-in last year when he had submitted an unconditional apology on behalf of Imran Khan in the Supreme Court during the hearing of a contempt of court case against the PTI chief Imran Khan later withdrew the apology.
No Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf office-bearer agreed to offer comments on Hamid Khan’s remarks.
Published in Dawn, July 27th, 2015

Cartoon on Bakwas Khan allegation and Naya Pakistan

Judicial commission report on rigging allegations in GE 2013

Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN): Judicial commission report on General Election 201...: Judicial Commission Report Final

A frivolous case | Why PTI licked Nawaz Sharif Spit in Judicial commission

A frivolous case


THE commission tried to be charitable. It threw in the bit at the end that the “PTI was not entirely unjustified in requesting the establishment” of the commission. It referred to the “suspicion of a sinister design”.
But we don’t have to be charitable. In the end, the PTI case of mass fraud and manipulation hung on two claims. Both those claims the commission took on in detail. Both were demolished in their entirety. Both — in the end — were nothing more than political smokescreens.
The first one, from the commission report: “562. The PTI has alleged that the Provincial Election Commission Punjab had employed 200 extra persons, picked up from the Urdu Bazar Lahore, just 48 hours before the polling and surreptitiously printed ballot papers to be delivered to unknown constituencies.”

Election officials are not the ISI. There’s little that can be kept secret at the constituency level.


That was the core of the PTI’s case and it went something like this: the ECP colluded with the senior Punjab bureaucracy handling election-related matters and with the caretaker chief minister to print bogus ballots in an unauthorised location and then had them delivered to specific constituencies where the PML-N trounced the PTI.
But it was fairly obvious what had happened, and the commission quickly unearthed it — astonishingly, from the very evidence given by the very witnesses that the PTI itself called to prove its claims.Basically, a lazy ECP realised late in the game that it had screwed up oversight of the printing of the ballot papers.
The Printing Corporation of Pakistan was supposed to print all ballots, but didn’t have the capacity when the final numbers were given to them by the ECP — so the Printing Corporation roped in the Pakistan Postal Foundation to help print roughly 20 million ballots for Punjab.
Amazingly, the numbering and binding of ballot books is done by hand — manually. Nearly two hundred million ballots. Numbered and bound by hand. In the 21st century. Welcome to Pakistan.
Of course, if the Printing Corporation doesn’t have an automated process, neither does the Postal Foundation — so the Postal Foundation handed several million unnumbered ballots to the Printing Corporation and left the Printing Corporation to deal with the headache. On the eve of the election.
A desperate and frantic Printing Corporation then had to hire more people at the last minute to number and bind the loose ballots supplied by the Postal Foundation — and for this the Printing Corporation initiated a pretty standard chain of actions: it contacted the ECP, which had its provincial appointee contact the Punjab administration and so were located the necessary workers.
Thirty-four experienced and qualified individuals — similar to the 80 already hired from all over the country to number and bind the ballots — were hurriedly found and sent from Lahore to Islamabad to get the job done.
It was, yes, an ad hoc arrangement that should never have been needed if the ECP had been more competent and alert — but it wasn’t surreptitious, and it involved many agencies coordinating transparently among, literally, hundreds of people and under the same multi-layered supervision and security applicable to the rest of the ballots.
The second allegation: “567. PTI had pointed out that in many constituencies ballot-papers in excess of total number of registered voters had been delivered, raising serious doubts that the same was done for ulterior motive and so as to facilitate rigging and manipulation.”
Basically, the PTI’s claim was that the ECP Action Plan for Printing of Ballot-Papers for General Election 2013 required the Provincial Election Commissioners, who report to the ECP, to determine the ballot count for each constituency based on the total required at each polling station rounded off to the next hundred.
The big gotcha moment for the PTI was that in Punjab, the Provincial Election Commissioner left it to the Returning Officers in each constituency to determine the number of ballots requested — the Punjab ROs, who were lower court judges, being in the pocket of the PML-N via then-CJ Iftikhar Chaudhry, according to the PTI.
So the commission again did the obvious — it looked at how the excess ballot requests were made. It was essentially a mess. The ECP didn’t really care about its own Action Plan, the PEC wasn’t interested either and the ROs came up with their own formulas — formulas that were based on arithmetic and that had nothing to do with who the candidates were in the constituency.
Instead of polling station-level calculations, polling booth-level calculations were made (a polling station usually has two or three booths). On top of that, additional margins were added by some ROs. That bloated and left uneven the excess-ballot count across some Punjab constituencies.
But — and this was really the crux of the allegation — the commission found no pattern to the excess ballot distribution; it found no evidence the excess ballots were systematically unaccounted for; and it found no evidence — direct or circumstantial — that the excess ballots were systematically used to benefit any party.
Basically, the commission found that the PTI had spun administrative anomalies into a vast conspiracy — but, at the most cursory of probing, the conspiracy collapsed into very ordinary explanations of a quintessentially Pakistani administrative cock-up.
Ah, but you’re thinking, that’s the state’s fault and the PTI only pointed out very real flaws and demanded they be investigated. Well, no. The PTI case was built on a sophisticated understanding of the election process — even your average candidate probably doesn’t know the intricacies of excess-ballot requests and printing arrangements.
You can’t possibly argue that you know the detail of printing arrangements, but not the reasons for them, especially when no one made any attempt at all to hide the explanations all along.You also can’t possibly argue that you know the details of excess-ballot requests, but not that they revealed no pattern that disadvantaged your party or helped the PML-N. Election officials are not the ISI. There’s little that can be kept secret at the constituency level.
The commission didn’t — couldn’t — say it, but the PTI case was frivolous. It was, though, a frivolity based on Imran Khan’s deadly serious quest to knock out the government and become prime minister.
But we knew that already. Onwards, to the next PTI gimmick.
The writer is a member of staff.
Twitter: @cyalm
Published in Dawn, July 26th, 2015

Reham Khan Fake Degree XPOSED !!!













Mystery over credentials of Imran Khan's BBC presenter wife who claimed she studied journalism... at a college that doesn't offer the course



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3161669/SEBASTIAN-SHAKESPEARE-Fresh-intrigue-past-Imran-Khan-s-new-wife.html#ixzz3fwrtuf9R 
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When I disclosed in January that cricket legend Imran Khan had secretly married former BBC presenter Reham Khan, his ex-wife Jemima Goldsmith seemed less than thrilled and publicly thanked Pakistanis who contacted her to say she remained their favourite First Lady.
Now questions are starting to be asked about the CV of TV journalist Reham, 42, who left Britain for Pakistan two years ago. Reham’s personal website states that she won her post as a reporter on the BBC regional show South Today after starting a postgraduate course ‘in Broadcast Journalism at North Lindsay [sic] College’, in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire.
Mystery: Glamorous former BBC presenter Reham Khan, who secretly married cricket legend Imran Khan
Mystery: Glamorous former BBC presenter Reham Khan, who secretly married cricket legend Imran Khan
However, according to officials at North Lindsey, it has never offered such a course.
Indeed, it does not teach journalism at all. Furthermore, they can find no record of anyone bearing Khan’s name or age ever having enrolled.
Questions are starting to be asked about Reham's CV. She is pictured with her husband
Questions are starting to be asked about Reham's CV. She is pictured with her husband
‘We do not have anyone by those names or date of birth having attended this college,’ says a spokesman. ‘We have never done a degree in broadcast journalism.’
Reham could not be reached for comment but it is not the first time that her past has been clouded in mystery.
Earlier this year, she claimed in an interview with a Pakistani journalist that she was a victim of domestic violence during her first marriage, to 54-year-old NHS psychiatrist Dr Ijaz Rehman.
However, this was angrily denied by the doctor, who told me: ‘I reject these allegations strongly.
‘I have never lifted hands on anyone. Domestic violence is a very serious offence.
‘I work in a very senior position in the NHS and if I was convicted or charged or found involved in domestic violence, in any sense, I wouldn’t have been able to practise.’
Imran, 62, who is now a leading politician in Pakistan, has two sons from his nine-year marriage to Jemima, 41, and a daughter from a previous relationship with the late heiress Sita White. Reham has three children from her previous marriage.
She married Imran in a simple ceremony in Islamabad after a whirlwind romance and their wedding was reported to have been met with opposition from some members of his family. Reham was subjected to insults after photos of her in ‘revealing’ clothes and a video of her dancing the tango were posted on the internet in the conservative Islamic country.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3161669/SEBASTIAN-SHAKESPEARE-Fresh-intrigue-past-Imran-Khan-s-new-wife.html#ixzz3fwrlIYKY 
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اسلام آباد(دنیا نیوز)عمران خان کی اہلیہ ریحام خان کا یوٹرن پہ یوٹرن سامنے آگیا ، براڈ کاسٹ جرنلزم کی ڈگری لینے کا دعویٰ غلط نکلا۔ 
برطانوی اخبار کے انکشاف کے بعد ریحام خان نے اپنی ذاتی ویب سائٹ سے تعلیمی ادارے کا نام بدل دیا مگر جب یہ خبر آئی کہ نیا انسٹی ٹیوٹ بھی جرنلزم میں پوسٹ گریجویٹ ڈگری جاری نہیں کرتا تو مسز خان نے اعتراف کر لیا کہ انہوں نے ڈگری نہیں ڈپلومہ حاصل کیا ہے ، میڈیا بس کر دے۔
برطانوی اخبار ڈیلی میل نے ریحام خان کے نارتھ لنزے کالج سے براڈ کاسٹ جرنلزم کی ڈگری حاصل کرنے کو جھوٹ قرار دیا اور بتایا کہ نارتھ لنزے کالج میں ڈگری تو دور کی بات جرنلزم پڑھائی ہی نہیں جاتی ۔ کالج ترجمان کے مطابق خان نام کی کوئی خاتون ان کی طالبہ نہیں رہی ۔ 
یہ ہے ریحام خان کی ذاتی ویب سائٹ جس میں واضح طور پر درج ہے کہ ریحام خان نے نارتھ لنرے کالج سے براڈ کاسٹ جرنلزم میں پوسٹ گریجویٹ کیا ۔
پاکستانی میڈیا نے خبر نشر کی تو ریحام خان ٹویٹر پر واضح جواب دینے کے بجائے الٹا میڈیا پر ہی برس پڑیں ۔ ٹی وی کے ساتھ منسلک رہنے والی ریحام خان نے کہا کہ یہی وجہ ہے کبھی ڈیلی میل نہیں پڑھا نہ ہی پاکستانی چینلز دیکھتی ہوں ۔ 
۔  یعنی سوال گندم جواب چنا ،ریحام خان نے اپنی ذاتی ویب سائٹ کا ایک پیج بھی اپ ڈیٹ کیا کہ اسے دوبارہ پڑھیں ۔ انہوں نے نارتھ لنزے کالج سے براڈ کاسٹ جرنلزم کا کورس شروع کیا اور بی بی سی سے چار ہفتے کی انٹرن شپ کی ۔ اب بھابھی جی کو کون سمجھائے کہ نارتھ لنزے کالج تو یہ کورس کرا ہی نہیں رہا ۔   میڈیا کے حقائق سامنے لانے پر ریحام خان نے یوٹرن لے لیا ، ٹویٹر سے ویب سائٹ کا پیج ہٹاتے ہوئے پروفائل میں تبدیلی کی کہ براڈ کاسٹ جرنلزم میں پوسٹ گریجویٹ نارتھ لنزے کالج نہیں گرمسی بی انسٹی ٹیوٹ سے شروع کیا مگر تعلیمی ادارے کا نام بدل کر بھی ریحام کی جان نہ چھوٹی کیونکہ ریحام خان نے جس نئے انسٹی ٹیوٹ کا نام لیا ، اس میں بھی براڈ کاسٹ جرنلزم کا کورس نہیں پڑھایا جاتا۔    گرمسی بی انسٹی ٹیوٹ صرف ڈیجیٹل فلم اینڈ ٹی وی پروڈکشن میں بیچلر ڈگری جاری کرتا ہے ۔ نئے حقائق سامنے آنے کے بعد ریحام خان نے اپنے تحریری بیان میں ایک اور یوٹرن لیا اور کہا کہ انہوں نے براڈ کاسٹ جرنلزم میں ڈگری حاصل کرنے کا کبھی دعویٰ نہیں کیا ۔ ان کے پاس گرمسی بی انسٹی ٹیوٹ میڈیا سنٹر سے حاصل کی ہوئی ڈگری نہیں ڈپلومہ ہے جو 23 جون 2006 میں ختم ہوا ۔   ریحام خان نے کہا کہ انہیں وضاحتیں پیش کرنے کی ضرورت نہیں لیکن معاملہ انجام تک پہنچانا چاہتی ہوں ، الزام ایسے وقت میں لگایا گیا جب لندن میں ایک اور ہائی پروفائل کیس چل رہا ہے ، میڈیا میری تعلیم کی بجائے ہائی پروفائل کیس پر توجہ دے - See more at: http://urdu.dunyanews.tv/index.php/ur/Pakistan/289277#sthash.1ZsMaxLu.dpuf


Chori ka samaan PTI leader kay gahr say baramad

Smokers’ Corner: Khan’s Achilles ear

Smokers’ Corner: Khan’s Achilles ear


Recently the volatile leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI), Imran Khan, told a renowned TV anchor (in an interview) that his persistent allegations against veteran journalist, Najam Sethi, were just a ‘political statement’.
Since last year, Khan had been insisting that Sethi (who was Punjab’s caretaker chief minister during the May 2013 election), had been instrumental in engineering the results in PML-N’s favour by applying ‘35 punctures’ (or making sure Khan’s PTI lost on at least 35 seats in the Punjab).
Sethi has been vehemently refuting the allegations, suggesting that Khan, who was convinced that he would sweep the election, just couldn’t swallow the defeat his party received in Pakistan’s largest province and was now making unsubstantiated allegations and looking for scapegoats.
Sethi also lodged a case against Khan in the courts. During the proceedings at the Supreme Court where PTI was asked to provide evidence for what it alleges is a ‘stolen election’, Khan and his lawyers did not mention anything about Sethi and his 35 punctures.

Believing in malicious rumours and gossip can sometimes be bad for your own reputation


Finally, during a TV interview last week, Khan casually dismissed his own accusation against Sethi as ‘merely a political statement’. His comment was lambasted in the media and the very next day a senior PTI leader, Dr Arif Alvi, tweeted an apology for PTI’s accusations against Sethi, saying the party had just commented on what it had heard from others.
Things then turned even more bizarre when Alvi was derided by some other senior leaders of the PTI for publically rendering an apology, so much so that Alvi then had to actually apologise for apologising!
Khan and his party have so far failed to provide any evidence whatsoever in this regard. And so haven’t the two controversial TV anchors who were echoing Khan’s conspiratorial mantra.
One anchor even claimed that he had a recorded tape that has a conversation in which Sethi himself boasts of having rigged the election in Punjab. Sethi took the anchor to court as well and no such tape emerged.
Things continued to get bizarre, though, when after facing severe criticism in the media and from some of his own supporters for confessing that his ‘35 punctures’ allegations were derived from what he had heard from some other people and that the accusation was just a political statement, Khan rebounded to now claim that Sethi did not apply 35 punctures, but 71!
Though by now the media is largely treating his new statement as a farce, various political commentators have suggested that Khan has become a hostage of bad advice being provided to him by some of his closest associates in the PTI.
At least two such commentators claimed that Khan has ‘weak ears’ (Kachay Kaan) and he readily believes in whatever is fed to him by his close confidants in the party.
This is an interesting observation because this is exactly what veteran cricket journalist, Qamar Ahmed, said in Karachi a few months ago. Chatting with his old BBC Urdu colleagues, Mohammad Hanif (author / journalist) and Mazhar Zaidi (former journalist and now a film-maker) and me at a party, Qamar was giving us details of a book that he was writing (on his 40-plus-year career as a cricket journalist).
He also brought up an episode that Javed Miandad mentioned in his autobiography in which he claimed how some time in the 1980s, Imran and Qamar, almost came to blows over some trivial issue in England.
Qamar Ahmed who has been settled in England for decades was the go-to man for most Pakistani cricketers arriving in that country to play county cricket. He would graciously let them stay in his apartment and would guide them about the ins and outs of life in England.
Khan and Miandad too stayed with Qamar when they began their county careers in the late 1970s and Miandad wrote in his book that this arrangement came to an end when Khan and Qamar had a serious falling out.
Qamar told us that Miandad (for some odd reason) confused the time period in which the altercation took place. According to Qamar, the squabble between Imran and him actually ensued during the 1992 Cricket World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.
‘Imran was a great cricketer and captain, but very vulnerable to rumours fed to him by his close colleagues … ’ Qamar told us. He and Imran had been very close, until he bumped into him in the plane that was carrying the Pakistan team from one Australian city to another during the 1992 World Cup.
Qamar waved and said hello to him only to receive an angry reply and an order to stay away from the team. Taken aback, Qmar responded in kind.
Meanwhile, Javed — who was sitting on one of the seats in the row that separated an angry Imran from a shocked but seething Qamar — jumped up and rapidly moved towards Qamar, telling him ‘Iss sey duur raho, Qamar Bhai, chor doh …’ (stay away from him, let it be).
According to Qamar, Miandad intervened again when Khan and Qamar were about to clash again at the baggage claim area, and this time Miandad bounced in to say: Yaar Qamar bhai, aap koh bola tha iss sey duur raho …!’ (I told you to stay away from him, Qamar Bhai).
Later in the tournament, Miandad informed Qamar that some journalist had told Imran that after Imran’s team had lost a game and Khan had gotten injured, Qamar was seen dancing and rejoicing in the commentary box.
Qamar told Miandad that nothing of the sort ever happened, but Miandad (in his own distinct style of speaking) kept telling him, ‘Chor den, Qamar Bhai, Chor den …’
As a consequence, on Imran’s instructions, Qamar Ahmed, the most senior Pakistani cricket journalist, was boycotted by the Pakistan team throughout the World Cup.
It took another 10 years for the misunderstanding to clear. Qamar says that in the early 2000s, long after Khan had retired and become a politician, he met Qamar at a gathering and finally apologised to him.
Qamar said: ‘He saw me, but I ignored him, because I was still angry with him. But he approached me, smiling, and said, forget about it Qamar, it was just a misunderstanding … ’
Yes, just like that.
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, July 12th, 2015

35 punctures - the real story

35 punctures - the real story


Now now, I might not have followed the 35 punctures story last year, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be up at 3:30 in the morning to write about it.

But first, how many of you saw Friday’s Aapas Ki Baat? What a show! Watch it if you haven’t already, and if possible watch it in 3D with a bag of caramel popcorn, ice-cream soda and dark glasses. This bucket has fireworks babes.

But the real reason I am doing my early morning rise and shine is not the fireworks or the punctures, but the various shades of logic that emerge on my Twitter timeline as one PTI supporter after another talks deep stuff about the story.

I think Najam Sethi should write a bestseller and call it Fifty Shades of Bray, and dedicate it to the PTI youth supporters on Twitter. Seriously people, Pakistani youth on Twitter supporting what is increasingly becoming quite a hotchpotch of twists and (u) turns is worth monitoring if truth is to be told about how the young people of Pakistan think these days.

This mass production of youth, educated by the unregulated private schooling mafia, is being herded by a party that’s increasingly becoming infested with confusions and contradictions (and yes U-turns)! To think that these young people will soon be let loose on the future of Pakistan. These young people who are so devoid of logical reasoning, and so reluctant to question their sacred gods that it scares me to think that these are the decision-makers of our future generations. What a time bomb waiting to detonate on us.

So trying to be useful at 3am, I very carefully analyse this raw data and categorise it into 35 categories (this is me trying to be ironic). I hereby present to you my very own version of the PTI’s 35 punctures.

Punctures no 1-5: The complete denial category. Remember what Meera once said to Mubashir Luqman with a very straight face? “This is a fack video.” Similarly there is a type of PTI supporters that is in complete denial about the party’s human follies. These are the conspiracy theorists, the soothsayers, the I-know-better guys, the time-will-tell people, and the IK-can-do-no-wrong crowd. “This in nothing but IK’s wisdom laying eggs”, they say. “You just wait and see”. And for special effect they start their tweets in the name of all that is holy and end them with some very colourful adjectives all in 140 characters.

Puncture no 6-10: The partial denial clique. This is the group that comprises the haters, the completely stubborn, the completely smitten, the completely loyal and the completely idiotic. Though reluctantly they all admit that the 35 punctures story lacks evidence so far, but what does it matter right? Even if it was without evidence Geo is still bad and Najam Sethi is still evil, and this is the theme we are always sticking to – even if IK ditches us and does solo interviews on Geo and later goes kite flying with Najam Sethi in the meadows. #U-turn.

Puncture no 11: Let’s change the topic puncture. This is the group that simply answers all questions with a single-track approach. We will talk about metro and we will talk about patwaris, and when all else fails we will talk about tabdeeli. #Bhabi please RT. Oye! Idiot. #achasorry

Puncture no 12-13: The accuser and the abuser. Oye, puncture vuncture whatever, but look at the lifafa journalists and look at the funding coming from India and look at this four letter word here, yes. #censorthishashtag. Done. Bhabi please RT #Iheartyou.

Puncture no 14-16: The artist, the peacemaker and the Photoshop guys. These are the talented ones amongst the PTI supporters and they believe in peace through art and craft (mostly Photoshop). What 35 punctures you idiots, they will say. Look here is a picture of Khan, and look how handsome he looks wearing a Superman costume and riding an SSG falcon while shooting 35 arrows on an American flag hoisted on a cricket bat doing Kung Fu with an Indian pigeon with 35 beaks. #onlyhope.

Puncture no 17-18: Puncture the traitor-slayer. Well since the puncture story has been debunked, let’s blame it all on India. Or else check out what’s happening in the Middle East. #35 punctures chor do, char halqay khol do.

Puncture no 19: The ultimate matchmaker puncture. East or west, Sheikh Rasheed is the best. IK Sheikh Rasheed bhai bhai. #saynotopride.

Puncture no 20: The hashtag generator. This by far is the most dangerous of the puncture category because it’s called ‘let’s divert everybody’s attention with an irrelevant hashtag’. Please for the love of God, PTI you are very good at starting trends on the social media. Please be responsible with what you generate. Sometimes #wehateNawazSharif has got nothing to do with the answers we want from your leaders.

Puncture no 21: The real-issue guys. These are the super sanguine people and all they have to say is chaddo jee, the real issue is not 35 punctures, but the real issue is the PCB appointment and the more real issue is Lola the showgirl. What about that, hain jee? #Copacabana #stupidmedia.

Puncture no 23-25: The moral brigade, the IK worshippers, and the let’s forgive IK advocates: These are the factions who have a lot of moral values especially for Sethi and are constantly micro-blogging short sermons in multiple instalments about how a journalist should never talk about personal stuff in a program and should never cast aspersions on the national integrity of a national leader no matter how much aspersions are cast on the non-national integrity of a non-leader national. #NoonLeagueHaiHai #PleaseforgiveIK. #BasAikGhaltiAur.

Puncture no 26-31: The clueless mafia. This is the category that is basically just that. Clueless. They are a herd of goats and this is how they operate. If no 26 is overjoyed that at last the 35 puncture story has been proven right (because he had a dream about it) then no 27-31 are overjoyed too and are already tweeting national anthems about it with hashtag: PTI ki shaan Bhabi Jaan. #Let’sbanShirinMazari.

Puncture no 32: The misogynist and the Malala hater. #MyLipsAreSealed.

Puncture no 33: The poet puncture. So this is the poetry this person is writing the moment he sees Aapas ki Baat. Roses are red, violets are blue. I love IK but IK loves you. (Bhabi please RT)

Puncture 34: The ‘let’s tweet like Bhabi’ puncture. Don’t you dare make fun of my hubby. My hubby will ban you. My hubby is the one hero produced in the country. #selfie on a prayer mat #IAmNotEnteringPolitics. #BhabiMakesPoliticalSpeech

Puncture 35: The ‘let’s talk like IK’ puncture. Five days ago: Oye. Meri wife politics main kabhi nain aaye gee. Five days later: Oye. Meri wife politics main aa nahi rahi… aa gaee hai. #IKIsTheMan.

On a serious note, PTI, darling, say something. I’m giving up on you (courtesy: The Great Big World). I still remember the first time I met the core members of the PTI all together in a room and my first reaction was: these are the people who represent me and mine. Middle class, educated, hardworking, honest, wanting a prosperous Pakistan because they believe in it not because they want something from it. 

And now I look at the PTI’s fast-changing image and I wonder if I was too naïve all along. There is nothing wrong about Reham Khan becoming the official face of a party that says no to family politics. Spouses all over the world do make public appearances. But the new kind of photo-ops that emerge on the media are largely overshadowing the PTI’s purposeful, intelligent, profound image of the past. When earlier we thought about the PTI, we thought about people like Andaleeb Abbas and Asad Umar, Dr Yasmeen and Shafqat Mahmood. Now it’s as if the seriousness of purpose has suddenly turned into a farce. 

A very bad caricature of its original self, the PTI is just an overly exposed jumble of controversies and confusions, silly statements, self praise, frivolity, and zero tolerance for dissent. As a firm believer of the PTI’s core values, I don’t see the party ever losing its support because Imran Khan’s star factor will always pull it up, but if the promise of real change has to be fulfilled then gloating over popularity should not be enough. 

Don’t isolate the more idealistic core of PTI supporters. Do away with the plastic. Bring the genuineness back. Bring the clarity back. Bring the honesty back. Bring the fire back. #IKpleaseRT.

The writer is an MSc candidate at the University of Oxford. 

Email: adiahafraz@gmail.com

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