Political freeloaders

him as a saviour and great reformer

ALT h O U G h most of our politicians

MNAs and MPAs are political freeloaders doing politics to build their own fortunes through corruption which is in-built in the archaic colonial system of governance, but none can be compared to the self-styled son of Rawalpindi Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed widely known as ‘Sheeda Tulli’ Whoever conferred this epithet on him was right on money to describe his real character he is uncouth, loud-mouth and devious

These traits surely helped him to build relations with politicians who needed somebody for the character assassination of their opponents

This he did first of all for Ch Zahoor elahi who used him against the PPP leadership in exchange for financial dole-outs Then he switched over to the PPP which also used him for similar purposes That was the time when he gained access to gate number four of GhQ which also needed a town-crier like him to drum up support for their unconstitutional pursuits That explains the reason why he has been a federal minister 16 times It also puts into perspective his voyage from rags to riches

If my memory serves me right I heard Ghulam Mustaf Khar giving him a shut-up call on the floor of the Majlise Shura and shaming him for having received money from him when he was Governor Punjab he was also snubbed by Moonis elahi when, as Interior Minister, he took a swipe at the PML(Q) leadership saying that he was standing with Imran Khan like a rock and was not like those people who had only five seats and were blackmailing Imran Khan for the Chief Ministership of Punjab Moonis elahi reminded him that during his student life he used to take money from the leaders of the same party he is the same Sheikh Rasheed whom Imran Khan insulted in a live TV programme with hamid Mir and at a public rally castigating his politics, remarking that he would not take him even as his peon

In the 1993 and 1997 general elections Sheikh Rasheed returned to the National Assembly on a PML(N) ticket, and during that time he never tired of showering praise on Nawaz Sharif as a great leader and his political mentor he paraded a live lion on Murree Road Rawalpindi during one of the election campaigns After becoming an ally of PTI in spite of the bitterness that existed between him and Imran Khan, he acts as more loyal than the king in portraying

In the USA and the UK, some political slurs are used to shame and denigrate politicians who are unprincipled, lack the heft to stand firm on their taken stand, change loyalties frequently or indulge in politics of self-aggrandizement A word that has been frequently used in the USA as a political slur is ‘Squish’ It is a term used by Republican conservatives to denigrate the perceived lack of backbone possessed by the Republican moderates This word surfaced during the time of Ronald Reagan Squish has also been used more broadly, to describe any liberal or conservative who avoids taking firm stands or doesn t stand for anything– a politician who will sell out, who lacks conviction, who cares more about popularity than principles Another definition of a Squish is someone who has difficulty in making up his mind and is too anxious to please, too eager to compromise and who can be easily rolled ‘Flap-doodler ’ is also a commonly used slur for a politician, a speaker of portentous but empty words best described as a demagogue

The term ‘Flip-Flopper ’ is used for a politician who is habitual of changing his or her opinion or taking position on a particular issue Pollywog’ denotes a politician who is considered untrustworthy because of his ever-shifting position on the issues at hand and whose track record corroborates the epithet Another political slur that is often used to denigrate a politician is ‘Rent-aQuote It is someone who might be relied upon by the media to provide a comment, especially one expressing a strong or contentious opinion either in any circumstances or when a particular issue is being discussed ‘Snollygoster ’ is used to describe a politician who is unprincipled and engages in politics of self-aggrandizement rather than serving national interests Another epithet given to a politician who discusses and debate issues but fails to act is Tire-kicker

In the UK a political slur which is quite often used to shame a political opponent is snowflake It generally implies a weak politician who is overly sensitive and incapable of dealing with any opinion that differs from his own; a person who is too easily offended, too in need of safe spaces and is too fragile It is also used to describe a politician who is self-centred and suffers from self-delusion

A cursory glance at our political history would reveal that the foregoing political slurs can safely be bestowed upon our politicians who have recklessly indulged in politics of self-aggrandizement; lacked the spine to stand up to the anti-democratic forces; have been even conniving with anti-democratic forces to destabilize democracy and democratic institutions for their personal gains; have been changing their political loyalties to swell their fortunes and have been selling their souls to remain in the corridors of power

The end result is that the country has suffered enormously due to their shenanigans and most of the challenges confronting the country in one way or the other are linked to the misdeeds of the politicians They have failed to learn from the setbacks the country has suffered They never tire of proclaiming their political credentials but continue to rally forces to destabilize the elected government of an opponent party and strengthen the hands of the forces inimical to democracy

The media as a representative of the society is supposed to defend and promote democracy which is also imperative for its own freedom, but regrettably a section of it is feverishly engaged in strengthening the anti-democratic forces in line with the polarization that mars our political landscape Instead of criticizing and discouraging state institutions from interfering in the domain of others and standing up to anti-democratic forces it is acting as their flagbearer It has no sense of proportion

It is amazing that a politician like Sheikh Rasheed on whom all the political slurs mentioned above apply and who has only one seat in Parliament which he earned cour tesy of another par ty, is engaged by almost all the TV channels for his outlandish comments and some channels even extend the cour tesy of hour-long exclusive interactions with him.

It is amazing that a politician like Sheikh Rasheed on whom all the political slurs mentioned above apply and who has only one seat in Parliament which he earned courtesy of another party, is engaged by almost all the TV channels for his outlandish comments and some channels even extend the courtesy of hour-long exclusive interactions with him People are also amazed at his audacity to make tall claims about his political character and morals, knowing well that he is a politician who has adopted a myriad of hues during his political journey

Malik Muhammad Ashraf is an academic

He can be contacted at: ashpak10@gmail com

S e n d y o u r l e t t e r s t o : L e t t e r s t o E d i t o r, Pakistan Today, 4 - S h a a re y F a t i m a J i n n a h L a h o re P a k i s t a n E - m a i l : l e t t e r s @ p a k i s t a n t o d a y c o m p k L e t t e r s s h o u l d b e a d d re s s e d t o Pakistan Today e x c l u s i v e l y

BISP fraudsters

T h e fraudulent practices by Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) agents have been on the rise The government recently released the first quarterly tranche of Rs7 000 for the year 2023 and Benazir Taleemi Wazaif for the children of the poor however, there is no disbursement yet Under the BISP alone, about 7 7 million families stand to receive over Rs55 billion in the first tranche The beneficiaries women and transgender people are in most cases unaware about their fate in this regard Most beneficiaries do not know if their children’s instalment has been added to their BISP amount This makes it easy for the agents to deceive the beneficiaries

Recently, in Sehwan, many beneficiaries were defrauded by the agents concerned One such victim was my relative who was deprived of Rs17,000 The agent gave her only Rs7000, while keeping the rest himself Upon knowing, she raised concerns, but the agent was successful in reaching a compromise with the victim

This is just one of the many cases one gets to hear from the victims

The agents have swindled hundreds of beneficiaries in Sehwan alone And this continues to happen without anyone taking notice of the illegal activity Instead, the officials spend time making tall claims of transparency In addition to deceptive practices, the agents are also skilled in the art of deducting Rs1 500 per head as their commission

I sometimes wonder how a nuclear-armed country is so poor in technology that it has allowed even matriculate fraudsters to deceive the entire system Indeed these agents take advantage of the gullible victims who are poor and illiterate The bigger tragedy is that they carry on their act without any fear of getting caught

The BISP mechanism must be made transparent and fraud-free For this, the government needs to launch an online portal where the BISP amount can be checked, accessed and transferred to the bank/mobile wallets by the beneficiaries The simpler the system is the more fraudfree it gets Till that happens, the authorities concerned need to be vigilant and they must take punitive actions against deceptive elements within the system

IMTIAZ ESSA HALEPOTO JAMSHORO

Over valued currency

T h e finance minister is on record saying that as per his calculation, the actual value of rupee is below Rs200 to a US dollar but the market is rejecting his claim, for the current value of dollar has a massive gap in the interbank and open market rates

Importers have been facing difficulties in opening letters of credit (LCs) due to shortage of dollars in the banks and travellers who need dollars for their overseas journey are complaining about scarcity of dollars in the open market

I do not see any economic wisdom in keeping the rupee overvalued It appears that the government wants to keep the value of rupee higher than its actual market value for political reasons

I think that keeping the rupee higher than its actual value by imposing various curbs on imports and banks, etc , is damaging for country’s economy Overvaluation of rupee is hurting exporters because they are converting their dollars at overvalued rate and getting less local currency

Overvalued rupee also makes imports artificially cheaper than locally produced substitute products which means dampening investments and jobs in sectors that can produce locally as they have to compete with imported goods

Overvalued rupee is also discouraging foreign direct investments (FDI) because local assets, like land, building, etc , become costlier Overvalued rupee is discouraging home remittances through interbank or official banking channels because the premium being paid by non-banking channels is way more attractive An overseas worker is tempted to send home remittances by unofficial channels

Thus the overvalued rupee is shrinking supply of dollars in banks as well in the open market The government should accept market reality regarding the value of rupee which is losing ground because of a variety of reasons

In today’s technological advanced world, the governments cannot keep currency at their desired value because markets are more efficient than the governments The government should review its exchange rate policy and let market forces decide the matter This will be good for the country and its economy

Undue inter ventions

T R A N S F e R S and postings of government officials on account of political interference is a common practice in the country that all government departments especially police have to live with In case of refusal the official concerned is even slapped with corruption charges This is the harsh reality of life in Pakistan

To analyse the basic reason behind such a political mindset we need to look into our past The feudal mindset has its roots in our colonial past The British snatched land from the real land owners, and awarded it to those who were subservient and willing to provide their unconditional support to the British government

Besides, we adopted democracy as the system of governance from our colonial masters In reality political parties continue to seek the support of village headman, influenced land owners and industrialists for sustaining their vote bank This is what the colonisers used to do in order to keep the masses under control by controlling the headman

In return, the headman used to get rewarded with land and titles

Today, such people use politicians to intervene in the functioning of police and revenue departments to suppress the rights of the locals who are financially weak This chain of brutality is unbreakable as the bureaucracy has not mustered enough courage to say no to the politicians Unfortunately, in their own capacities, the bureaucracy has become a tool in the hands of the headman, refusing to provide confidence to all their honest officials

H o W a C r o s s - b o r d e r lo v e s t o r y I l l u s t r at e s

t H e e x t e n t o f W H at s a p p s u r v e I l l a n C e I n I n d I a

H OW P R I VAT E I S YO U R C H AT?

Scr oll N ac h i k e t D e u s k a r

Wh at started as a remarkable tale of crossborder love ended up as a warning against the extent of mass surveillance in India

On Sunday, India deported a 19-year old Pakistani woman Iqra Jeewani Jeewani had eloped with an Indian man, and had been living in Bengaluru for four months however, she was given away by the Whatsapp calls she was making back home to her family in Pakistan Using this, Indian authorities were able to hone in on her the fact that Indian authorities were able to pinpoint and pick out a Whatsapp number from a city has led cybersecurity experts to infer that it is plausible that the metadata from the popular messaging platform is being used for mass surveillance While Whatsapp encrypts user communication, several instances have now shown that it still collects enough data about its users to allow governments to mount highly effective surveillance and thus put user privacy at risk

IN SURVEILLANCE CROSS HAIRS: Jeewani and Mulayam Singh Yadav, a 25-year-old from Uttar Pradesh, India, fell in love in 2019 while playing Ludo online, the Indian Express reported In 2022 deliriously in love and tired of living apart, Jeewani eloped and met Yadav in Nepal

From there, they crossed over into India and started living in Bengaluru where Yadav works as a security guard Jeewani hid her real identity and Yadav reportedly got her a fake aadhaar card under a different name however, their cross-border romance ran into trouble when Bengaluru police arrested Jeewani on January 23 for illegally entering India and forging her identity Yadav was arrested for helping her Jeewani was deported on February 19

What eventually led to Jeewani and Yadav getting caught was not her fake identity but the Whatsapp calls she was making to her parents in Pakistan

Jeewani’s Whatsapp calls back home caught the attention of central intelligence agencies, which passed on the information to Bengaluru police for investigation, the Indian Express reported, citing an unidentified investigating officer the fact that calls to Pakistan were being made from the city raised an alarm with Bengaluru’s police at a time when the city was scheduled to host the Group of 20 meeting and the aero India defence exhibition the police inquired into the matter and reported back to the intelligence agencies that while there was no security threat they had identified an undocumented Pakistani living in India

WHATSAPP METADATA USED FOR SURVEIL-

LANCE? Jeewani getting caught based on her Whatsapp calls has led cybersecurity experts to infer that it is plausible that Whatsapp s metadata which is not encrypted, is being used for mass surveillance Encryption encodes messages on Whatsapp and makes it inaccessible to all parties other than the sender and the receiver of the message

While communication through Whatsapp is encrypted end-to-end the metadata is not Metadata refers to information about the user ’s activity and the user, such as when a call was made between two persons, the user s geographical location and her phone number Unlike the contents of a message, metadata can be read by Whatsapp

Rowenna Fielding founder and director of privacy consultancy Miss IG Geek, told Wired in 2021 that metadata is a valuable tool to analyse connections among users

When you look at metadata, it turns out a lot of the time you don’t even need message content, because patterns of activity tell you a lot about someone,” Fielding said

What Jeewani s deporting indicates is that Indian security agencies seem to be using this metadata from platforms such as Whatsapp for mass surveillance “the establishment has been building the CMS [Central Monitoring System] since the Mumbai attacks [of 2008],” cyber security researcher Srinivas Kodali told Scroll “It gives the security establishment access to a lot of traffic

With [messaging platforms] Whatsapp and Signal they have been tracking peer-to-peer contact they don’t know what you are talking but that this talk is happening Kodali added they [agencies] are monitoring traffic continuously and getting alerts ”

Using metadata for surveillance is a technique other agencies across the world such as the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation also use, he pointed out

Similarly, anand Venkatanaryanan, the co-founder and cybersecurity lead of Delhi-based strategic think tank DeepStrat, wrote that Jeewani’s case shows that intelligence agencies can now not only undertake targeted monitoring of a given contact number but also conduct “generic” monitoring of Whatsapp using metadata For example, an alert would be triggered if the origin of a call is India and the destination is Pakistan anand tweeted on February 21 Kodali, however, said he was unsure if tracking was happening in a geographical area-specific manner being limited to Bengaluru due to its heightened threat perception or applies to the entire country anushka Jain, policy counsel at the Internet Freedom Foundation emphasised that while it seems this happened possibly because of metadata, due to lack of information, the Indian public is unaware of the mechanisms by which this data is shared between the Indian government and Whatsapp “Whatsapp collects and shares metadata with Meta, the parent company,” Jain told Scroll “But we do not know if there is ongoing data sharing with the law enforcement agencies We also do not know if there are standing instructions from authorities to flag any IndiaPakistan calls being made Jain added, We can only hypothesise about it because this surveillance process is not transparent ” the potential scale of this surveillance means that Indian citizens should be concerned about such data being shared and any kind of “excessive intru- sion” into their privacy “Why should the government know about these things? Jain argued

METADATA WIDELY SHARED BY PLATFORMS:

Metadata is widely shared by platforms with law enforcement agencies globally experts have previously pointed out an article co-authored by anand in 2021 suggested that service providers including messaging applications such as Whatsapp, share metadata with intelligence agencies and law enforcement in India, and such data is adequate for investigations

In 2021, ProPublica, a United States-based nonprofit investigative journalism website had reported that Whatsapp s parent company had downplayed how much data it collects from its users, what it does with it and how much it shares with law enforcement authorities in the United States Some rivals such as Signal intentionally gather much less metadata to avoid incursions on its users’ privacy, and thus share far less with law enforcement ProPublica reported Whatsapp’s spokesperson had told ProPublica that the platform “responds to valid legal requests including orders that require us to provide on a real-time going forward basis who a specific person is messaging” however, it is unclear if Whatsapp in India sticks to this american template or goes beyond it General Michael hayden, the former head of the United States’ National Security agency, had confirmed in 2014 – though not directly referring to Whatsapp –that the United States government uses communication metadata for surveillance hayden also said that metadata tells authorities everything about any person it is targeting for surveillance, making the need to collect the actual content of the communication superfluous “We kill people based on metadata, hayden had said, adding that the practice is only used outside the United States