A Caretaker
Minister on the VOA
Dr. Misbah Azam
Phoenix, AZ
On November 16, 2007, Barrister Mohammed Ali Saif,
interim Minister for Tourism and Youth, appeared
on a Voice of America Urdu talk show, to explain
the challenges which the interim government faces
to hold free and fair elections by January 8,
2008. In this live show he demonstrated his incapacity
to defend his government and his own decision
to join it.
He lectured the listeners on how the government
had been “fair” with those judges
who refused to take oath on the PCO and let them
go as if the word is not aware of the government’s
“fairness” with those judges. When
one caller congratulated him for being part of
a lame duck government and asked him about the
“wrong decisions” the Supreme Court
had taken, and about the progress in nabbing terrorists
after sending the judiciary and media home, the
minister refused to respond to the caller by asserting
that the caller was emotional and he was not willing
to respond to him. However, he went on to deliver
another lecture about the “tough”
decisions the government had to take to “save”
the country.
Responding to another angry caller, his tone became
derogatory. In his conversation in the show he
demonstrated his attachment to General Musharraf
– not to the people of Pakistan.
With their marked aristocratic disposition, could
such ministers lead the country to fair and free
elections?
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