Two Twits Down, One To Go

This has really been a good week in some respects.

First there was news about wankmeister Zaid Zaman Hamid's long overdue comeuppance, initially at the hands of students in Peshawar and finally with a cartoonish flop show on 23rd March in Lahore. This is how Nadeem Farooq Paracha blogged about it on Dawn's website:

"For months the Zaid Hamid brigade had been congesting cyber space and the two TV channels that the haughty ideological quack is a regular fixture on, with promises of holding a ‘massive gathering of youth’ at the Minar-e-Pakistan on this year’s Pakistan Day (23rd March).

However, the no-show by Zaid and his fans at the Minar-e-Pakistan suggests the long honeymoon Mr. Hamid had been enjoying may be as good as over.

He simply failed to reach the Minar-e-Pakistan, not because he had a massive body of passionate young men with him chanting for his caliphate, but mainly due to him chickening out in the face of an announcement made by a radical Islamist group that recently named him in a police FIR for murder.

Perturbed  the articulate (but not very accurate) TV ideologue decided to hold his ‘historic’ rally at Lahore’s spacious Alhamra amphitheatre.

A man who likes posing in (passé) revolutionary attire and who it seems is always ready to pick up a Stinger missile and boldly cross into India and take-over Delhi, decided to quietly escape being at a venue where presence of a fringe group was expected.

So, the following message was fired by the man on the 23rd March: “Alhamdulillah, for tactical reasons, the venue for Takmeel e Pakistan has now been shifted to Alhamra Open Air Theatre adjacent to Gaddafi Stadium. Insha’Allah it is going to be an emotionally charged ideological, historical, earth-shaking event. Spread the message to your friends. Each one of you please do bring along a sabz hilali parcham. Be there by 3:30 p.m. Insha’Allah. PAKISTAN ZINDABAD! ONWARDS TO TAKMEEL E PAKISTAN! See you there Insha’Allah!”

Now that we know what the ‘tactical reason’ was for the sudden change of venue, what happened next was even more ‘earth shaking.’ No-one turned up.

Reports coming in from those who did decide to go, suggest that there were hardly a hundred Hamid fans present there. Funnier still was the fact that the Alhamra Hall was booked on urgent basis (by Hamid and co.) not as a venue for a rally, but for an ‘urgent marriage ceremony’!

So what happened? A figurative divorce of sorts."

You can see for yourself the "earth-shaking" event at the Alhamra:








And then today we've had news that the incompetent and afflicted-with-verbal-diarrhoea Mr Jamshed Dasti (of the Muzaffargarh PPP and chairman of the National Assembly's Standing Committee on Sports) has been forced to resign from the National Assembly after his Master's degree in Islamiat was adjudged to be fake by the Supreme Court.

The details of Mr Dasti's humiliation are rather tantalizing. Asked a series of questions by the Supreme Court hearing the challenge to his credentials, Mr Dasti managed to make even the justices cringe. Asked what were the subjects he studied for his degree and which year his degree was awarded, Mr. Dasti expressed complete ignorance. He was then asked to name the first 15 chapters of the Quran - he could not. Asked to name the first 5, he again could not. Finally asked to name at least the first and second, he replied that they were "Alhamd Sharif" (it's actually called "Sura-e-Fateha") and "Sura-e-Aal-e-Imran" (it's actually Sura-e-Baqrah, Aal-e-Imran is the third). Now, I doubt most people could name the first 15 chapters in exact order but keep in mind that the man supposedly had an MA in Islamiat. He was also asked how much 4 times 2 is, which he also apparently got wrong. After the Chief Justice told him to rethink his defence, he asked for time and ran away from the court only to have his lawyer come back and tell the court that he had submitted his resignation from the parliament.

Dasti lords his incompetence over others (Source: APP)

But dheet that he is, he still had the temerity to appear on Geo News to sheepishly say that he accepted the court's verdict and that he put his faith in God. I think his actual words were "Allah khair karay ga" (God will make everything all right). Do recall that this is the man who used to breathe fire and brimstone from the pulpit of the Sports Committee and fling around allegations like nobody's business. So not only is he a fraudster and incredibly stupid, he is also unrepentantly macho. The combination boggles the mind.

But he is not the only one who has been caught out faking his credentials. At least 3 other parliamentarians from the Punjab have resigned in the face of similar humiliation. Personally, I see no reason why this should be the end of the matter. Firstly, what about the two years' worth of salaries, allowances and perks they have managed to wangle from the people of Pakistan? The least that should be done is for these amounts to be recovered from them. But equally importantly, why should resignation from parliament be the end-all for them? They have knowingly defrauded the state of Pakistan, subverted the electoral will of the people and denied the legitimate candidates who stood against them. Even if this does not fall within the ambit of high treason, a stint of jail time is the least they should now enjoy.

You know what would make it a perfect week? If someone took a shoe to another fake fraudster, Mr Hardilazeez Twit himself.