“Just one city, please?”
Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Marriyum Aurangzeb was quoted by Daily Nawa-i-Waqt (01 May 2017) as saying that Imran Khan had raised a false slogan of ending corruption while having locked down the accountability commission in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. She went on to say that he ought to leave at least some city in Pakistan where he does not utter falsehoods.
State of security
Daily Nawa-i-Waqt (01 May 2017), reporting on the lack of security measures at Karachi’s central jail, stated that a woman climbed the wall of the prison which is some 17 feet high, and remained there for an hour before being apprehended. The report stated that investigation was required to ascertain whether she was a detainee or an outsider.
Age matters
PTI chief Imran Khan, responding to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s advice that he ought to ‘go and play cricket’, asked how he could possibly play cricket at the age of 65. According to Daily Nawa-i-Waqt (01 May 2017), he went on to say that corruption in the country could not possibly be ended unless the Godfather is first sent home.
Friends everywhere
Former cricket captain Shahid Afridi was quoted by Daily Nawa-i-Waqt (03 May 2017) as saying that all politicians were his good friends, and he did not know why they couldn’t unite and work together.
Priorities
Daily Jang (04 May 2017) reported that in India, it was difficult to obtain ambulances for people but an NGO had donated 5 ambulances to serve cows.
Hungry lions
It was reported in Daily Express (06 May 2017) that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in an address predicted that in 2018, the Lion would eat up the Pigeon which closes its eyes and that those who arranged a spectacle (tamasha) in Islamabad will be left with nothing.
Apples and oranges?
Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on his visit to India, was told by an Indian journalist that if he considered Kashmiri demands in India to be legitimate, then Kurdish demands should also be considered constitutional. According to Nawa-i-Waqt (02 May 2017), Indian media made an ‘unsuccessful effort’ (na-kaam koshish) to conflate the Kurdish and Kashmiri issues. The Turkish president said that it was a big mistake to compare apples to oranges, and that the Turkish people had a problem with a single terrorist organisation, not the entire Kurdish people – and this bears no similarity to India’s situation in Kashmir.
Karzai’s theory
Daily Express (07 May 2017) quoted former Afghan president Hamid Karzai as saying that Daesh (the Islamic State group) is actually a product of the United States and that the US attack in Nangarhar province using a Mother Of All Bombs (MOAB) was a joint effort between the superpower and the terrorist group.
Commitment
Sindh’s chief minister Murad Ali Shah was quoted by Daily Express (07 May 2017) as saying that if it became necessary to steal in order to build Karachi’s mega-projects, he would be willing to do so in order to complete them.