Think from your brain and NOT from your heart – Raymond Davis Saga finally comes to an end as expected

It’s acceptable to think from your heart sometimes …. Especially when Pakistan is playing a cricket match …. However, in matters of national and strategic interests you have to be extremely rational in your approach keeping all the emotions aside.

Our media … well, let’s be fair, they have been used and abused in this espionage game.

The spectrum of our media ranges from Left libertarian to Right Authoritarian. However, the majority of our media analysts and anchors are now either Left Libertarian (minority) e.g. Najam Sethi, Mosharraf Zaidi, Farrukh Saleem, Eijaz Haider etc. or Right Libertarians (majority) e.g. all the main stream media personnel (Kamran Khan, Hamid Mir, Ansaar Abbasi, Mujeeb Ur Rehman Shaami, Haroon Rasheed, Javed Chaudhry, Saleem Saafi …. And the list goes on)

Coming back to the Raymond Davis Saga, our mainstream media just stand confused. They don’t know whom to blame for this drop scene. Someone is blaming Punjab government, others cracking down on Federal government; a few got the courage to blame ISI and lastly interesting comments on judiciary, “this judgment is a black scar on the face of judiciary”. Well well well … I thought that the judiciary was independent … isn’t it?? Ooooppppsssss !!!!

While our mainstream media pundits are running around like a headless chicken, after realizing that all their predictions and propaganda is flushed down the drain and they have been used as a tool by our spy agency to achieve their own goals (strategic interests), the Left Libertarians stand smiling as if they already knew what was going to happen eventually, and that was common sense isn’t it?

This brings me back to the title of the subject that matters of national interests should not be thought through hearts. Currently, mainstream media is baffled with emotions and their objective analysis has been choked and hampered.

Some reality check for our audience; our economy is barely growing at a meager rate of 2% to 3% compared to average regional growth of 6% - 8%. We are in IMF program (rightly or wrongly is a separate debate) which requires slashing of subsidies to curtail our fiscal deficit that is ever increasing. Inflation is spiking so much that real incomes of middle class are actually decreasing. Our army is engaged in war on terror and demanding more money to fund them, tax to GDP is pluming down each year means lesser growth in Government’s revenue. As Farrukh Saleem rightly said “Government wakes up in the morning starts printing 2,000 million rupees to fund its intraday expenses and calls it a day”. Under this brutal reality, here comes Mr. Davis, an “American Rambo”, as some have labeled him, and conducts a Jason Bourne style assassination. Rest is needless to repeat.

Now the question is what is our national interest? Keep a myopic view and execute the CIA contactor, or re-negotiate our terms with CIA by sitting on the table and redefines the rules of war on terror. In the pretext of our circumstances, as I mentioned earlier, any sane person would opt for the latter option. Our Agency did exactly the same, created public pressure, through media leaks while Punjab Government seized the opportunity to gain some political scores. Shah Mahmood Qureshi was sacrificed in the due course. Senator John Kerry’s visit to Islamabad shows the desperation of Americans to get their contractor released. Why Americans were desperate? Simply because they didn’t want this case a precedent for other countries. Subsequent to several meetings of the spy agencies, Mr. Davis was released after fulfilling the necessary legal requirements. He was offered an exit passage in accordance with the rule of law.

Like it or not, Mr. Davis was used as a bargaining chip by ISI and once the “Standard Operating Procedures” were renegotiated, it was considered unnecessary and dangerous to keep Mr. Davis in Pakistan further. Off course, it’s not wise to strain a relationship with international community beyond a certain level, after which you have to behave maturely and go for a resolution.

In my opinion, we have cut a better deal under the circumstances. People should understand that we have to first build ourselves, economically and socially by good governance and vibrant / visionary leadership in order to be in a position to influence our terms, else, all of us will suffer further.

Our mainstream media should analyze the situation in the correct context (like the Left Libertarians did in this case), stop dragging the issue further, and move on to the issues of a much higher importance. For viewers and followers of local media, this whole episode has however, helped to further define the distinction in analytical approaches of Right libertarians and Left libertarians i.e. who thinks through his heart and who uses his brains!

Yet another absurd piece of journalism

While skimming through a number of news papers this morning, I came across yet another piece of absurd and nonsensical journalism. And this time, DAWN was the culprit (Although I find DAWN maintaining relatively better standards in reporting).

The news reported by Mr. Nasir Iqbal appearing in Dawn dated 15^th March 2011 by the title “SC gives loan defaulters chance to file objections” states the following:

“The court has taken up a suo motu notice on media reports that the central bank quietly allowed commercial banks to write off non-performing loans of Rs54 billion under a scheme introduced by former president Pervez Musharraf. The amount swelled to Rs256 billion after the period of written-off loans increased till Dec 2009 (from 1971)”.

The above mentioned lines are ugliest piece of crappy reporting that has numerous flaws and facts twisting.

1. The writer is trying to give a false impression that under some conspiracy scheme, Mr. Musharraf (The president) allowed write off of loans by Commercial Banks (Private Business) through the Central Bank (Regulator). This is clearly fact twisting since the Supreme Court is probing the loan write offs since 1971, but it has nothing to do with Mr. Musharraf or his “scheme”. The writer is clearly giving a false impression that Supreme Court is probably implicating Mr. Musharraf in this case as a mastermind which is certainly NOT the case.

2. Someone should tell this idiot writer that Banking Policy Regulatory Department which deals with the Prudential Regulations for commercial / microfinance banks is headed by the Governor Sate Bank and NOT the President of Pakistan. And there was NO such “special scheme” during 2002 – 2007 that secretly allowed commercial banks to write off loans. Yes there were write offs of the loans in that period and court is perhaps rightly inquiring the matter.

The bottom-line is that the writer here is deliberately misstating the fact and twisting it according to his own bias, giving an impression that Mr. Musharraf was directly involved in facilitating loan write offs. Shame on you Mr. Nasir Iqbal.