Maleeha Hashmey |
Most goals people set are not achieved because they are not held accountable for them. When goals are made in private they tend to fall off because people stop being motivated enough to chase them as ambitiously as when their deadlines are out in the open and they have a do or die situation to deal with. So was the case with the newly elected Prime Minister of Pakistan – who not only announced a 100-Day plan for himself and his potential cabinet weeks before contesting the General Elections ’18.
The effective implementation of the 100-Day plan, as super ambitious and seemingly impossible it may have been, given the tough socio-economic circumstances Pakistan was in when he was sworn in as Prime Minister – has definitely been something he turned no stone unturned in achieving honestly.
No one is above the law. No one should be able to manipulate, prioritize their individualistic gains stemmed from vested interests to the nationalistic gains and get away with it.
Majority of the well-wishers warned PTI not to come up with any such self-assigned deadlines, as they were afraid people were going to straighten up their binoculars and judge them like never before but not pitching this idea was perhaps not on the cards. Their apprehensions turned out to be right.
We saw our nation jolted out of the deep slumber and question the Government on every nitty-gritty of every decision mercilessly. Some quarters of the ruling party did fall prey to self-pity also, remembering the days when there would be massive corruption on all fronts day in, day out but no one would question the ruling elite.
Nevertheless, being a citizen of Pakistan, who exercised her vote to choose as to who should be placed in the driving seat to represent my country all over the world, I could not have been happier to see people mustering the courage to QUESTION the incumbent Government like a strict Mathematics teacher, who never learned to take “No” for an answer.
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This is how it should have been since day one though. No one is above the law. No one should be able to manipulate, prioritize their individualistic gains stemmed from vested interests to the nationalistic gains and get away with it. No one should have the spine to spend taxpayers’ hard-earned money on maintaining their lavish lifestyles while leaving the hungry poverty-stricken quarters to sift through garbage to find edibles.
What Government has been able to achieve so far; the gap between the desired outcome and achieved output and the way forward – is being analyzed and we’ll all be filled in with the details on every area in a week’s time – as every Ministry is presenting their performance reports to the Prime Minister, one by one.
His prediction regarding CM, Punjab – Usman Buzdar, to outshine Waseem Akram and become “Waseem Akram Plus” was something that made everyone have a hearty chuckle.
From what we have seen so far, what has pleased me to the core is the fact that Pakistan is seeing a dawn of transparency and accountability – the beginning of an era that will eventually pull people out of superiority and inferiority complexes – making them all believe that they are all equal – the divine message that our Holy Prophet (P.B.U.H) delivered to the mankind centuries ago and hence we saw an immaculate justice system back in the day.
Yesterday, as the first week after the completion of the first 100 days began, Prime Minister – Imran Khan invited the top-notch journalists of the country and gave them the opportunity to exercise complete liberty to interrogate him on anything and everything regarding his Government’s performance in the first quarter. That’s a first, I must say.
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Never have we seen any Prime Minister going for a group interview with seven seasoned journalists, so comfortably. Each one of them threw their sharp queries, shared their concerns and reservations, starting from how he intended to get hold of the corrupt to the core bureaucracy to the problematic elements within his own cabinet to Azam Swati to Zulfi Bokhari to Usman Buzdar to Donald Trump to the challenges faced by him in his current position and what not – to which Prime Minister responded in detail in a calm & composed manner, without getting offended.
His prediction regarding CM, Punjab – Usman Buzdar, to outshine Waseem Akram and become “Waseem Akram Plus” was something that made everyone have a hearty chuckle. (I must confess, they were not the only ones, the audience across the country had a similar reaction to this super optimistic announcement).
I would like to urge the Government to arrange more of such interactions with media on a regular basis so that the masses can have a detailed response from the CEO of the State on all the trivial and gigantic issues bothering them.
While responding to a query on where Pak-US ties headed after the hot twitter spat between him and POTUS – Donald Trump back in November, he was pleased to share that Donald Trump seemed to have taken the “Tit for tat” response pretty well and wrote him a letter applauding Pakistan’s efforts and acknowledging our sacrifices while seeking our help in bringing Afghan Talibans on negotiation table with the US over Afghanistan issue.
I was verily reminded of all the “super-intellectual” fellows, who, upon hearing the same viewpoint from the cricketer-turned-politician years ago, termed him “Taliban Khan” – but now that the President of the United States of America is sharing the same take on the issue, it has started making sense, all of a sudden.
Prime Minister’s much-needed media interaction not only cleared up many confusions and misunderstandings that germinated and got multiplied in the last 100 days but also broke the cliché that the Head of the State can’t be questioned directly, which is precisely what we grew up watching and assuming.
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I would like to urge the Government to arrange more of such interactions with media on a regular basis so that the masses can have a detailed response from the CEO of the State on all the trivial and gigantic issues bothering them. After all, that’s what the very idea of voter-centric democracy is, where the State revolves around the nucleus of public interest. Pakistan Zindabad!
Maleeha Hashmey is a corporate trainer, motivational speaker, socio-political enthusiast and human resource development consultant by profession. She has been working with the telecommunication sector as a corporate trainer. She has been working with the Ministry of Education, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, as a Human Resource Development Consultant & Teacher Trainer. Her dream is to make Pakistan a stronger economic state that the whole world views as a force to reckon with. She can be followed on Twitter via her Twitter handle @MaleehaHashmey. The views expressed in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Global Village Space.