Daily Times

So the operative phrase last week was in Latin, ‘locus standi’. I am extremely deficient in this language and therefore had to search out the meaning of this particular term. With this term, the honourable and august bench of the Supreme Court has asked the very respectable Dr Tahirul Qadri a very basic question. In Punjabi, there is another phrase that comes to mind, and fits here perfectly. It is ‘tainu kee?’ (what is it to you?). Dr Qadri was simply questioned what the basis for filing his petition was and how it affected him. In Urdu, there is a saying, ‘Begaani shaadi main Abdullah deewana’ (Worrying about matters that do not concern someone at all). But the irony is that there are many Abdullahs in line waiting for a signal here or there, so they can perhaps get the chance of their lifetime. These are people who perhaps can only dream about going anywhere on the tube. But if they hit the jackpot, they can either become the caretaker this or caretaker that.

The great Mughal-e-Azam, Emperor Akbar used to seek Birbal and Mullah Do Piyaza’s company for his entertainment. They provided the much-needed comic relief to the stiff-necked emperor. Nowadays, we have so many on TV entertaining the masses that great comic geniuses like Birbal and Do Piyaza would be pounding sand in this day and age. Every night the circus goes on and people in the guise of analysts, strategists, panelists and cankers, oops, I meant anchors, entertain the general masses. The politicians are branded as thieves, bandits and looters, and the harp goes on and on. Not to mention, beautiful damsels have jumped into the foray of standup acts as well.

The mathematically challenged like me are given detailed explanations of two numbers: 62 and 63. The two articles of the constitution were introduced by a late general, who was envisioning inducting angelic characters like himself straight from heaven into politics. May God grant him 62 and 63 rewards for his great contribution to the ‘Mumlikat-e-Khudadad (God’s great country). Angels had to leave their important business up there and descend on the only Islamic republic created in the name of Islam to provide a ‘Pak’ (pure) form of leadership.

From there on, we have been in quest of the angelic and heavenly characters. The ‘accountability first and then elections’ slogan was introduced to our intellectually challenged masses by the great hero — the one and only ‘true Muslim’ General Ziaul Haq. We have been looking for angels ever since. We may pay almost nothing in income taxes; we may dodge traffic fines; we may want illegal connections for electricity, but by golly, when it comes to our elected representatives, we want nothing less than a cent percent ‘Sadiq’ (truthful) and ‘Amin’ (honest) person.

Hence, Dr Qadri and many behind him are trying to awaken our consciences that are on heavy-duty tranquillizers. But when he was reminded by the honourable bench about locus standi, I was amazed at his Freudian slip of the ‘dual national’. How rapidly Dr Qadri retorted and used the three most forbidden letters of the English alphabet, which are reminiscent of some harsh and derogatory epithet. If you wonder what those three letters were, then let me help you: P, C and O. How quickly he took a swipe at the ‘robes’, drawing a quick parallel between his oath of allegiance to the Queen of England and the oath taken by the honourable judges under General Pervez Musharraf’s PCO. Perhaps something must have gone sour between the former general and the Sheikh. Didn’t Dr Qadri answer ‘I am all in’ to the call of the former president in 2002 when the uniformed ‘messiah’ was looking for a few ‘clean’ men? But again, who remembers all these minute and meaningless details. Give us a few clean, pure and angelic men, who will emerge victorious on the scale of 62 and 63 and then as the famous number from a Bollywood flick goes, “Bhayya (Brother), all is well.”

This takes us to the respectable ‘robes’. I have one question for them as well. Dr Qadri was unable to prove his locus standi because he is a dual national and with utmost respect a political nobody with zero representation in parliament. But let’s assume if tomorrow a Pakistani citizen of singular citizenship and residence in Pakistan raises the same question, what will our Lordships say at that point? All I can say is perhaps the Lordships will still frown at that individual as well and say, “Caution, locus standi ahead.”

The writer is a Pakistani-American mortgage banker. He blogs at http://dasghar.blogspot.com and can be reached at dasghar@aol.com He tweets at http://twitter.com/dasghar