Daily Times

Sir: As I waited for a VIP motorcade to pass one day, I started counting vehicles to pass the time. They numbered roughly around 40. Majority of them were police vans stuffed with, of course, alert and armed police guards. Other than that, separate policemen were posted along the both sides of the road with the kind of readiness that goes against the reputation of the Sindh police.

Despite the deteriorating condition of the road, the convoy whizzed by. In a matter of few minutes, it was out of our sight, leaving only the dancing dust behind. Through that dust I could see clear as crystal that it was a politician under tight protocol. But the riddle was — which one? Well before I approached anyone to unpack it, the guards that stood ahead me, dropping their guns, spoke with the tiredness parallel to a soldier’s who returns to his camp after having spent the whole day at battlefield “Thank god, Syed Murad Ali Shah is gone”

Last Friday, Sindh Chief Minister (CM) Sindh Murad Ali Shah came to Hyderabad on a personal visit and the house he arrived at happens to be in the same area where I live, namely, Qasimabad.

Talking about geography, the point of this area where the CM’s meeting was due is located nearly on the outskirts of the city. The population is also thinly scattered here. Now what justification does he have to accompany a larger than life caravan comprising 40 vehicles in an area as remote as this?

Having himself escorted by dozens of security personnel in a city like Hyderabad, where will he be standing on moral grounds when he announces next time that Sindh is a safe province? No sane person, including me, will buy his rhetoric unless he or she receives at least half of the protocol that the Sindh CM enjoys. The boggling scale of this hypocrisy makes all his future claims null and void. As the old adage goes, charity begins at home.

VASDEV

Mithi, Tharparkar

Published in Daily Times, February 13^th 2018.