... aka
Taliban Khan, who ain't the sharpest bulb on the national tree...
-bashers to have fun at his expense. However,
some people cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go...
Okara on Wednesday found him to be in his most generous mood. Perhaps influenced by the presence of ex-PPP hope Ashraf Sohna, it was here that the kaptaan offered his most dangerous exposé of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif
... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf...
. In what would rank as the ultimate insult a politician could wish for another, the PTI chief said the prime minister was even worse than former president Asif Ali Zardari.
There might have been a context to the taunt. It could well have meant to pinpoint a specific blunder that Mr Khan thought his arch rival was guilty of. Still, an allusion to the Zardarian innocence in comparison to Mr Sharif's failure to pay taxes or his alleged greed generally was apparently sound enough proof for pro-PML-N (sections of the) press to flash. This was not proof of a frustrated fortune-seeker retracing his steps helter-skelter. This was a starry-eyed wayfarer all at sea -- a few by-elections, particularly one in Lahore, getting the most incredible thoughts out of Mr Khan, even by his own standards.
It was -- it still is -- that kind of an election that extracts so many surprising old and new sides to the contestants -- the sight of a PPP candidate going to the Election Commission with complaints that the PML-N and PTI candidates were overspending. This was seemingly the only aspect the PPP had the strength to contest, in an area that included parts of Lahore that foretold the party's demise in the city all those decades back. NA-122 includes areas which were included in the constituency from where Ms Benazir Bhutto
... 11th Prime Minister of Pakistain in two non-consecutive terms from 1988 until 1990 and 1993 until 1996. She was the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founder of the Pakistain People's Party, who was murdered at the instigation of General Ayub Khan. She was murdered in her turn by person or persons unknown while campaigning in late 2007. Suspects include, to note just a few, Baitullah Mehsud, General Pervez Musharraf, the ISI, al-Qaeda in Pakistain, and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who shows remarkably little curiosity about who done her in...
had won in 1988, not by too impressive a margin to a man famous for installing water coolers in the locality. Her party tamely conceded the seat to the same candidate in a by-election, accelerating the process of the PPP's ouster from Lahore's politics.