Received as Forwarded
A soft spoken and decent PMLN MNA from Southern Punjab is at his wits end on what to do. His family and constituency have always voted for the PMLN and won. He keeps a low profile, doesn’t lobby for posts in PMLN governments, not even for positions in parliamentary committees. He hasn’t been able to procure an audience with his Leader Nawaz Sharif for over a year but isn’t resentful in the least. He loves books and reads the blurbs conscientiously. He lives modestly from the proceeds of his inherited landholdings and is ever ready to help his constituents with sifarish for jobs or release from thana culture. But his life is about to change.
The Aliens are knocking at gate.
They want him to desert the PMLN and become an Independent candidate. Indeed, they are demanding that he and his two MPA “wings” should immediately desert the PMLN and fight the elections as Independents. Or else.
Or else, what, one of his “wings” cleared his throat and timidly asked.
Or else some people may “disappear” and you will lose the election.
A scary thought flashed in the “wing’s” mind. Didn’t Nawaz Sharif and Mariam accuse The Aliens of disappearing a few of their key organisers and voting agents in a bye-election in Lahore last year?
This “Wing” is particularly vulnerable. He is a contractor on some CPEC road building projects in the region. And we all know who in the Alien’s vast business Empire has sub-contracted them to him. Faced with Hobson’s Choice, he has gone pleading to his elder MNA relative for solace and advice.
In turn the elder gentleman has apprised a couple of senior journalists of his family’s predicament and sought their advice. He can either sit tight along with his “Wings” and get ready to contend with some brief disappearances of some key movers and shakers in his electoral machinery during his election campaign. But endangering the life and property of his associates would be a “dishonourable” thing to do in the community. Or he can crumple and switch to save his “honour”.
Such stories are the stuff of everyday life these days.
Watch this space for what happens next.