Daily Times

Sir: A movie made at the perfect time can help bring attention to a topic that previously nobody would have cared about. We are experiencing something similar in Pakistan today, but instead of a movie, people are talking about a book that surprisingly has not even been released yet.

We must give credit to the lady who calls herself “A star” who has chose such an opportune movement to publish her ‘memoirs’. The upcoming elections are set to be one of the most fiercely contested in recent history and the release of her book might end up affecting their outcome.

Its release has people salivating at the stories it might contain and the media has been beside itself trying to get their hands on the manuscript of the book. However, the diversion created by its imminent release has taken the conversation away from actual issues affecting the country and instead of policy; the PTI and Imran Khan are left answering questions over its controversial contents.

We are inching ever closer to the elections and by the end of the next month we will presumably have a new government in place. The nation is waiting for each political party to present their mandate for the next five years as Pakistan has big problems at hand which need to be solved at once.

So this is no time for one of our potential future heads of state to be fielding questions about a salacious book that hasn’t been released yet, instead of talking about his vision for the country during his tenure.

These next elections are absolutely essential for the progress of democracy in our nation and nothing can be allowed to interfere with them. Even the last US elections had evidence of being tampered with, through fictitious stories and ‘fake news’.

If this can happen there, then Pakistan is surely susceptible to the same kind of nefarious influences that aim to change our mind on the upcoming elections. Instead of focusing on every sensational claim made in the book, we should instead focus on issues that actually need to be discussed in the public spectrum. These include social injustices, the water crisis, rampant corruption in the country and strategic foreign policy matters etc.

Eligibility of candidates and their mandate should be the talk of the town, not some slanderous, attention seeking, book.

HIRA QURESHI

Mianwali

Published in Daily Times, June 21^st 2018.