Articles of the year 2020

Pakistan is now caught up in the latest crime, horrific by nature and being spread by the media to boost ratings for pay which is the new paradigm.

They continue relentlessly spinning stories that do not exist around the incident. They are at a ‘now’ moment and will continue to feast on this story till it is well and truly done.

Of course the politicians have taken up the cry. Screaming the loudest is Rana Sanaullah, the erstwhile law minister of the Punjab, rallying for the arrest and punishment of the rapists. Blaming Buzdar, the chief minister of Punjab and the IG police, for mishandling of the case.

Their cries are so shrill, that they stop short of blaming Buzdar for the rape. They stop short, but only just.
In journalese what is unsaid speaks volumes, and at times carries more meaning than the spoken word.

Rana Sanaullah who screams the loudest, is asking for Buzdar and Imran’s resignation. However, he is not mindful of the fact that when he was law minister of Punjab the largest child porn ring was unearthed in Kasur, revealing 100s of minor children, some as young as five years old.

No arrests were made and no prosecution took place. It is rumoured that political bigwigs were involved, but the matter was soon hushed up and nothing more was heard of.

So Sanaullah is also one of the main accused in the Model Town massacre, where 14 women were shot in point blank range outside Shahbaz Sharif’s house under allegedly Shahbaz Sharif’s instructions. All this is included in the infamous ‘Volume 10.’ For Rana Sanaullah to create a political maelstrom out of this incident is duplicitous at best.

Sanaullah’s motives are obvious, but media management is the forte of the PML-N. The TV anchors are cranking out their stories, by gory detail, which are really figments of imagination, being crafted by creative story telling. The subject however, is so fresh and the market is ever ripe, for such tales of horror.

The police of Punjab, will surely succeed in finding the two culprits. It remains to be seen whether the prosecutors will be able to take the matter to closure. The political point scoring of the PPP and PML-N is yet another example of political opportunism.

They also sadly feast on these incidents for their own political benefits. The public should look closer at the motives of people like Sanaullah, who can use horrific incidents to further his political anti-Imran agendas.