Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue" & the Pakistan Scene
By Air Marshal (Retd)
Ayaz Ahmed Khan
With one million and eight hundred thousand copies (1.8 million) copies sold, Sarah Palin's book "Going Rogue", has electrified American youth.
Her political rating has jumped from 21% to 47%. President Barak Obama's is 49%. The book reveals that she is an extremely hard working politician, and despite being a mom with five kids she works round the clock. Her courage and dynamism and revelations of corruption in the American culture, and her determination for change from business as usual, made her Governor of Alaska, and the Republican Party nominated her as Vice President. She could be nominated by the Republican Party for the Presidential election in 2012.
She has written about political corruption in the state of Alaska and in the gubernatorial elections. Page 112 of "Going Rogue," is reproduced, because it has relevance to the sordid history of lack of ethics among politicians and public servants in Pakistan . Here corruption has become a part of our culture. The proof is election rigging, corruption in government and semi-autonomous departments, nepotism, embezzlement of public funds, non-payment and evasion of taxes, defaulting and non-return of bank loans, and to top it all, the infamous National Reconciliation Ordnance.
The NRO has benefited 8041 influential people, including 248 elite politicians and senior bureaucrats.
General Musharraf promulgated this infamous Ordinance with the motive to hold on to power perpetually. The beneficiaries have been exonerated from all allegations, and wrong doings, and all court cases instituted against them. Mian Nawaz Sharif has directed all ML(N) MNA's and MPA's implicated in the NRO to resign forthwith. PPP needs to emulate this example of political ethics and integrity.
In the Alaska elections for the State Governor, Sarah Palin was running the election campaign with a shoestring budget, against five other candidates, who were business tycoons and millionaires. She writes, "We promised to shine a bright spotlight on ethics reform and to clean up the favor factory known as the Capitol Building . An undercover FBI investigation of the Alaska State Legislature was bubbling to the surface. In the week after the primary elections federal agents served more than twenty search warrants, many of them at the offices of state legislatorsfive Republicans and one democrat.
It turned out that the feds had been investigating, the links between some lawmakers and VECO Corporation the big oil services company. The warrants allowed FBI agents to search computer files, personal communications, official reports and items emblazoned with the phrase "Corrupt Bastards Club", or "CBC".
"Corrupt Bastards Club", the "CBC" had become a barroom joke, after a newspaper opinion piece, highlighted eleven lawmakers who had received large campaign contributions from VECO, and who appeared to cast votes according to VECO Corporations demands. The name stuck and the lawmakers thought it was so funny they had hats painted up that said "CBC". It was not so funny after the feds showed up. Alaskans were disenchanted and felt disenfranchised from their own government. We were going to change that".
Long time back I had read in the Punch the British comic magazine - that there are two people who laugh at their follies: Polish and Pakistanis.
After reading "Going Rogue",
Americans could be included in that category of "the shameless".
The NRO has revealed that there are thousands like that among us. Rich and influential people who get court decisions and bank loans wiped out belong to a category of rogues, who would have delighted to be called bastards, if they were Americans. But here they play holy and we vote them into power, regardless of their lack of ethics. They need to read Sarah Palins book "Going Rogue". They may wish to follow the example of Alaskan-American legislators.
