“Violence is justified, as long as my party is perpetrating it.”

Naeemul Haq of the PTI (pictured) slapped Daniyal Aziz of the PML-N on TV

Violence. The great means to the great end; the great end being the establishment of the Naya Pakistan. For if the end is the creation of Naya Pakistan, who cares if a few people get slapped along the way, right?

For those who still don’t know, Naeemul Haq of the PTI slapped Daniyal Aziz of the PML-N, on Muneeb Faruq’s show on Geo, after Daniyal Aziz called Naeemul Haq a ‘thief.’ What a noble man is Naeemul Haq, that he gets offended when somebody calls him a thief. Clearly, we must all side with him for he is the radical revolutionary we have been waiting for, the one who will deliver us from our penance, and then we can start actually building the Naya Pakistan.

Whether you find this sad, alarming or hilarious, there are those who actually believe everything I’ve written up there.

You see it started in 2014, when the great Imran Khan of Mianwali decided it was OK to mainstream uncouthness into Pakistan’s politics. When it was pointed out that more is expected from the leader of a party that claims to represent the educated, urban lot of Pakistan, his followers came out of the bushes like snakes and consistently asked ‘so what if he uses uncouth language?’ Well so his lackey slaps a minister on TV. That’s what. It doesn’t take a genius to draw that line. One would’ve hoped the great Khan would reprimand Naeemul Haq, like he is wont to do with Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif, but his Twitter account sits quiet today.

But Imran Khan not berating Naeemul Haq is not out the ordinary. In fact, one might go so far as to call it “mundane.” Imran Khan who indulges in uncouthness himself is hardly the kind of person you would expect to come to the aid of Daniyal Aziz, or tell his minion to apologize, or say that this is not how civilized people behave. Imran Khan then, is like Khadim Hussain Rizvi. When Rizvi was asked about the filthy, vulgar language he employs in his sermons and his homilies, he said even at the time of the prophet the companions used such language. It is nothing bad, or out of the ordinary. It didn’t take too long for that vile language to turn into a full fledged war on the state of Pakistan either.

So it should come as no surprise then that the followers of Imran Khan — the ones who claim they are the educated, urbanized, progressive, modernist people of Pakistan — say Daniyal Aziz deserved being physically assaulted because “he was taught a lesson.”

It’s absolutely what a danyal aZiz deserves ... in Pakistan if you call a passerby one bad word he runs after you hence danyal was slapped and taught a lesson

— Naz Fatima (@NazFatima17) May 23, 2018

According to the perverted logic by this person, it would be quite OK now for any PML-N supporter to go and “teach” Imran Khan a lesson by punching him in the face, or “teach” Asad Umar a lesson by throwing a shoe at him, or “teach” Jehangir Tareen a lesson by violently accosting him. I mean, it is OK to use violence to teach people a lesson apparently.

This periphery that we’re standing on, is unacceptable. You may hate the words and actions that your opponent uses. You may hate their guts. You may hate the fact that they refuse to see your point of view, but know that you are in the wrong if you stand behind the person who violently accosts another person just because you don’t like the words that he’s saying.

I’ve seen Naeemul Haq up close. He can usually be found sitting at the Burning Brownie cafe in F-11 Markaz in Islamabad on weekend nights. I’ve always been put off by his vibe, but I never imagined that this lazy, cantankerous waste of human flesh would have it in him to slap a person from an opposing political party. Clearly, our politics has reached a point where this is an acceptable modus operandi.

This is not the Naya Pakistan I had envisioned when Imran Khan first coined the term. Instead of it meaning something positive or good, Naya Pakistan has become a pejorative term; the kind you want to disinfect yourself from. I really hope Imran Khan will put his money where his mouth is, and reprimand Naeemul Haq. Because if not, this will just be one more item in the list of hypocrisies Imran Khan has committed and is known for.

This high handedness disgusts me

A child made a metro bus out of milk cartons& wanted to present it to #NawazSharif. Was happy when I got him thru2him twitter.com/MaryamNSharif/…
— Maryam Nawaz Sharif (@MaryamNSharif) February 10, 2013

Earlier today Maryam N. Sharif, daughter of Nawaz Sharif tweeted this pic. Find anything wrong with it? Abhorrent? Disgusting? Sickening? Maybe you see that the "common" person is not "equal" to Maryam N. Sharif and that's why he's sitting on the ground? Maybe you see that Maryam N. Sharif is so high and mighty that she would never actually talk to such a man if it weren't for the many cameras? Maybe you realize the sickening irony of how these leeches have sucked us dry while they role around in moolah? Maybe you find that while this was happening, 200 doctors were arrested who have been on a hunger strike for seven days now? Maybe you found how fake this whole scenario actually is?

I did. So I tweeted this back to her.

@maryamnsharif can you not see the things wrong with this picture? A poor man can never be equal to you, right? Shame on you. All of you.
— Hamza Malik (@hmz_89) February 10, 2013

She hasn't bothered replying yet.

The kid appears to be crying. He's sitting on the ground because of course, the mighty madame would consider it her insult to consider him her equal. Of course the common people of Punjab do not deserve to be treated as equals. When have they ever been? But such displays of bullshit make my blood boil. Why are they special and the rest common? Were they conceived by a gold statue? Lest we forget, this lady who pretends to be so humble, and angelic (getting a "common person" through to Nawaz Sharif is akin to a feat of heroic proportions) belongs to the same family who's other female member (daughter of Shahbaz Sharif) had the employee of a bakery beaten up because he told her the bakery was closed and the owner was not in. She sent her "official" thugs (policemen), had the poor sod thrashed and then had a case registered against him. When the media jumped on the bandwagon, Shahbaz Sharif instead of having his daughter arrested (which would have been the noble thing to do) ordered his son in law to appear before the police. Why he was ordered to do that, we shall never know.

The Metro Bus System will fail. And I will tell you why it will fail. It cost Rs 30 billion. It was supposed to be completed in 3 years, instead it was completed in less than 1. The problem with that is quality. They completed the ring road early as well, only to have a bridge fall on top of a truck. This is 8.3 km of elevated track. Quality assurances anyone?

It will also fail because people who use their cars will continue using them. They will not get up and get on the bus out of the blue. They tried this before. They launched the Lahore Transport Company (LTC) once. It failed. They tried to launch it again, this time with green buses which run on CNG. It failed again. In fact there were many instances of vandalism where students refused to pay the fare and thrashed conductors. Now they've launched this, a third time. You know what they say, third time's a charm.

But the biggest reason it will fail is this: The people were not educated enough to be able to use this properly. The people who use this service will be the "common" people. Who will break this like they broke all the other transit systems before. The rich will never use this because it is "beneath" them to travel with the "common" people. And since no one was educated about the benefits, this too shall be relegated to the annals of history.

Instead of launching this first, the Sharif government should have used that money to educate the population of Punjab. Inculcate in the children why Rapid Transit Systems are beneficial and why they need to be used. They could've used the money to set up power plants because now the provinces can do that on their own. But then they wouldn't have been able to show that off as readily as they can show off the red colored bendy buses now could they?

And here's the real irony (if the picture up there wasn't enough), Shahbaz Sharif, Nawaz Sharif, Maryam Nawaz Sharif or any of their family members will never use these buses to get from point A to point B. This was just for show. Show's now over. And they can just go back to living like kings and queens in their palaces, cut off from the rest of the world; the common world.