The Pakistani Spectator

It’s official, Mr. Gillani has dropped several places on my personal PM rankings! Well, it’s not like he ever held the top spot on that “premier” list, but he was a decent outfit nonetheless.

However, last week’s speech was a huge disappointment, not because of the lack of content, but because of his lack of confidence. His teleprompter antics and the latency gaffes were enough to make his popularity graph nose-dive. He looked totally the anti-thesis of “Nayak”, in the movie, the hero was a newsman who became the PM , here, our PM was trying to be a newsman, and failed miserably at that.

Anyway, this post is about my favorite PM. The criteria for that are simple and are as follows.

He/she:

1. should have been the PM after 1978, because that’s my birth year
2. had at least three months of tenure
3. had a small cabinet
4. spent less on travel and overseas tours
5. spent less on protocol and residence
6. was not a world bank or IMF employee

Now let’s analyze who qualifies. The following analysis has been totally based on my memory and could be erroneous, but is accurate to the best of my knowledge.

According to 1, Mr. Bhutto and all his predecessors are out of question.

Number 2 means Messrs. Balkh Sher Mazari and Shujaat are not eligible.

According to 3, Messrs Shaukat Aziz and Gillani (with more than 60 ministers), Nawaz Sharif (around 30 in both tenures), and M/s Bhutto (with around the same number as Sharif) are all disqualified.

Mr. Junejo falls short on the overseas tour criteria (he was indeed on an overseas trip when he was ousted by General Zia). Same goes for Mr. Jamali and Mr. Sharif and M/s Benazir.

Number 5 disqualifies pretty much every one who has been a PM including Mr. Jatoi and Mr. Soomro.

Let me confess at this point that number 6 was specially designed to disqualify Mr. Moin Qureshi, whom I consider to be responsible for soliciting huge loans from the world bank which he should have left on the next government.

The only person who has passed these stern tests is a simple person who had a very small cabinet of around 10 ministers. A PM who traveled in economy class, remained in his own house and didn’t move into the prime minister house. A man who was a true gentleman who had worked his way up from very humble origins, yet power didn’t inflate his head.

That man, ladies and gents, was Malik Mairaj Khalid!

Let’s remember his modesty, for here’s a man just out of reach of lesser man!