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No king, emperor or potentate, much less the leader of a democratic state, can possibly hope to receive the kind of American welcome given to Pope Benedict XVI, who came, conquered and left.

He landed in an Alitalia plane from Rome at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, a facility where only visiting heads of state and governments on official visits arrive. They are greeted by senior officials, and only rarely by a member of the President’s cabinet (which unlike our expanding cabinet numbers just around a dozen). The Pope was received by President Bush and Mrs Bush, who had been joined by one of their daughters, with the women elegantly dressed in black.

In the three or four days the Pope stayed, first in Washington then in New York, the press could not have enough of him. The Washington Post, which for the last many years has not been known for what one might call sound editorial and news judgement, devoted its front page and several inside pages, profusely garnished with pictures, to the pontiff. Other newspapers did not allow themselves to fall too far behind either. As for television channels, some were more effusive than others, but effusive they all were. This is not a Catholic country, although the Catholics are a majority among Christians.

Pope Benedict has stepped into the shoes of a man who had come to be both respected and loved around the world, a man who had the greatness of spirit to forgive the young Turk who tried to kill him. His would have been a hard act to follow for anyone, much less the former Cardinal Ratzinger.

Rosemary Radford Ruether, writing on NYTimes.com on Sunday, quoted Pope Benedict as telling Catholic educators in New York “Any appeal to the principle of academic freedom in order to justify positions that contradict the faith and the teaching of the church would obstruct and even betray the university’s identity and mission.” She suggested that the Pope’s words should be put in the context of his former post as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly the Inquisition). “During the 25 years when he headed this office (1981-2005), he cracked down on progressive Catholic thought, closed down seminaries dedicated to educating priests in the context of the issues of poverty and injustice, and, again and again, progressive bishops were replaced with conservative ones.”

Various scholars and theologians say, according to a report in The Washington Post, that in the first days of his papacy, Benedict did appear to downgrade interfaith dialogue, removing Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, an Arabic speaker and noted Muslim scholar, from his role as president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue and sending him to Egypt as nuncio, or the Vatican ambassador. The Catholic Church under its current leader is certainly going to become much more conservative in opposing liberal trends.

Ruether pointed out that this clampdown on progressive Catholic thought and on the openness to debate on controversial issues has included the most creative and respected Catholic theologians of the last half-century. Was it then Pope Benedict’s conservatism that endeared him to Washington’s first family?

In New York, Pope Benedict visited a synagogue. Perhaps he needs to draw inspiration from his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, who became the first Pope in history to visit a mosque when he stepped inside one in Damascus in May 2001. On that trip, he also asked for a joint act of contrition “for all the times that Muslims and Christians have offended one another.” It was a grand gesture of reconciliation that did more for better inter-faith understanding than any comparable gesture from any other quarter.

The Pope’s castigation of Islam has not been forgotten by Muslims, although he has tried to mend fences since he spoke those unfortunate words about Islam. He has said that he wants to reach the Muslims through dialogue. His meeting in Washington with religious leaders included some Muslim invitees, but some others who were approached during the planning stage declined. One of them said that he would have been the first to go were the meeting with the pontiff in the form of a dialogue with people of other faiths. But it was nothing of the sort. There was no dialogue, no exchange. Pope Benedict alone spoke, though his subject was inter-faith harmony.

The Washington Post recalled the Pope’s negative remarks about the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) during a lecture at the University of Regensburg in Germany, in 2006. The newspaper pointed out that although the Pope has repeated several times that he regretted the offence his speech caused, and that he has deep respect for Islam, the remarks have caused lingering damage, according to Muslims and some Catholic scholars.

“I don’t think he did enough to apologise,” said Omar T Mohammedi, a member of the New York City Commission on Human Rights. Wael Mousfar, a Brooklyn Muslim community leader, told the newspaper, “For a person of his stature to come out and say this about Islam, it amazes me, it’s sad. Islam is the target of everyone nowadays; he just jumped on the bandwagon and joined the crowd.”

In New York, the Pope visited Ground Zero, which could only have brought to the surface the memory that those who staged the 9/11 attacks were Muslims, although Muslims who had been misled into believing that by sacrificing their lives and causing thousands to lose theirs, they were glorifying Islam.

Perhaps in the months and years to come, Pope Benedict will make the kind of grand gesture of amity, goodwill and understanding towards Muslims that his predecessor did, as that alone will wipe out the unpleasant memories his name still triggers.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Whenever there is a new government in Pakistan, something begins to happen to my friend Zafar Rathore that can only be described as an itch to render advice on how to govern the country. Some people never change and he is certainly one of them. He continues to believe that those whom fate or tanks or votes bring to power are keen to read books and learn how good government is run. He refuses to believe that the chosen ones do not read books, do not think they have anything to learn and do not believe that a day will come when there would be a knock on their door and in would walk a messenger who would say, “The tea party is over and your baggage is in the truck.”

I thought Rathore would restart his evening walk instead of pondering over the intricacies of statecraft in the light of history, but I am afraid the nature of his affliction is terminal. He has once again come up with a primer that he hopes the new rulers will follow. So let’s see what the sage of good governance has to say this time. The Pakistani state, he declares, is in a crisis because of its inability to make its writ run, its taxes collected, its laws maintained or its institutions operated. This is bad news, but like all bad news, it is true. The failure is said to be the fault of the ruling class, which considers itself “enlightened and Westernised.” In spite of being responsible for the creation of Pakistan, it has been thrown on the ideological defensive by both religious reactionaries and the proponents of the latest American idiom.The ruling style of this class has been arbitrary and erratic, which in turn has compounded its insecurity and alienation from the people. It is precisely this arbitrariness which makes the executive authority to monopolise power.

According to Rathore, a classic example of the arbitrary and delusional exercise of poweris the Devolution Plan introduced by Gen Tanvir Naqvi, the Gorbachev of Pakistan. Eight years ago, a well-argued critique of this scheme was presented to its framers, which they never even looked at. Since 1947, rather than building upon the legacy of a limited, predictable and effective state, successive Westernised rulers have greatly expanded the scope of government and undermined autonomous institutions that were a check on their desire to exercise unlimited power. In 1949, secularism became its first casualty. In 1955, the provincial governments of West Pakistan were arbitrarily abolished by the executive and the judiciary invoked the doctrine of necessity to justify it. In 1958, Iskander Mirza, the civilian constitutional head of state, conspired to abrogate the constitution rather than face defeat in elections. Those who followed continued to rule arbitrarily and beyond the pale of law.

Rathore believes that democracy is merely a constitutional device for periodic and relatively peaceful transfers of power from one party to another. What occurs between such transfers is up to the wisdom and character of the political leadership that happens to be in power. The collapse of law and order in society is directly related to the inability of the servants of the state to operate without excessive and often unlawful arbitrary interference by powerful members of the executive. Unless this arbitrary interference is substantially reduced, the rulers will continue to find themselves surrounded by incompetent sycophants. Such individuals serve their masters of the moment principally to magnify their limitations and deficiencies and thus contribute to their downfall. It is in the enlightened self-interest of the rulers to limit their arbitrary propensities and cultivate the rule of law and merit. Rathore believes that if it is not done this time around and politicians fail yet again to manage, the consequences will be dire. I suppose by dire he means another speech on the telly beginning “ Meray aziz humwatno …”

According to Rathore, the mechanism through which the executive exercises power is the bureaucracy. In Pakistan, the bureaucracy has lost its esprit de corps, is polarisedalong ethnic or sectarian lines, is characterised by nepotism and servility, and disregards the merit principle.

And what is a meritocracy if not a hierarchy of intellect and character based upon moral relationships between those who work together? Sadly, with us, intellect, character and moral relationships are precisely the virtues that are incompatible with advancement. So what is the answer? Rathore advocates the establishment of an autonomous and neutral body, comprising eminent persons to handle the recruitment, posting, transfer and dismissal of government servants at both federal and provincial levels. Working in conjunction with the federal and provincial Public Service Commissions, this superior body could ensure that merit remains the basis of recruitment and promotion.

Rathore recommends that a higher administrative commission should handle all promotions to senior positions and the chief executive should follow those recommendations. Similar provincial commissions with identical functions should deal with junior cadres. Those who serve on their boards should have security of tenure. Two of the board members should be from the ruling and opposition parties. To help their work, inspection commissions should be set up at federal and provincial levels to evaluate the performance of civil servants for promotion, posting and accountability. But what to do about Gen Tanvir Naqvi’s gift to the nation: devolution? The rollback of the Naqvi system, he maintains, should not mean blanket restoration of the old status quo but a measured restoration that places elected local governments, etc, under constitutional protection to ensure that arbitrary interference in their affairs is contained. The functional local government structure inherited from the British should be restored and all provincial sources of revenue, not just land revenue, should be placed under district collectors. District magistracy, which should be abolished from more developed urban areas, should be separated from collectorship, as in India, and the executive powers of the district magistracy should be vested in the local head of police as is done in most other countries.

Will the Rathore recipe make a Singapore out of Pakistan? Yes, but in a week of Sundays.

OK, there are no Beefeaters guarding the White House as there are outside Queen Bessie’s residence in London, nor does the President ride to the Capitol in a carriage straight out of Walt Disney’s Cinderella for his annual State of the Union speech. He does not move around his capital with sirens blaring and uniformed outriders in dark goggles roaring down the street ahead of him as more of them make up the rear creating a racket loud enough to raise the dead from their resting places. Nor have I ever seen a bemedalled Marine in full regalia standing ramrod straight behind the President when he is addressing, say, Daughters of the American Revolution or Wives Against Drunken Husbands.

I have been to the White House more than once, once even to see what Shaukat Shortcut Aziz was up to. (He expressed a desire to meet the President’s dog Barney.) Last time I was there to attend a press conference by the President in the East Room where all of us had been asked to take our seats in advance of Bush’s appearance. A lectern had been placed for the president and minutes before he arrived, an aide placed a slim file on the lectern and disappeared from view. President Bush soon appeared walking briskly, as he does, cracking a joke or two, as is his wont, and then began taking questions. He stood there all alone. There was nobody behind him nor anyone hanging around on the sides. The conference done, the President turned on his heels and walked right back without being followed by anyone, except one or two who kept their distance.

Now we cut to Islamabad – or Lahore or Karachi or Peshawar. Enter the President to speak to a group – journalists on an off day. He stands behind a lectern – far more fussy than the one at the White House, and even the one at Buckingham Palace – smiles, greets those present and begins to speak. But he is not alone. There like a colossus stands behind him a stony-faced, immobile, moustachioed man in uniform, highlighted by a white or red tunic, complete with epaulettes and medals earned in campaigns never fought. There he stands, staring into the camera and distracting attention from the distinguished gentleman who stands in front of him. Every time the President is on the telly speaking to this or that group, I hardly can listen to him as my eyes are riveted at the uniformed Capt Immobile or Major Stoneface parked behind him.

What I said about the President also holds true of the Prime Minister, Governors and Chief Ministers, none of whom can any longer move an inch in any direction – except perhaps to go to the loo though one can’t be sure since what takes them there is not on camera – without being followed by the uniformed one. The sight has become farcical and it is reminiscent of some old music hall routine showing a potentate strutting up and down a stage with a bemedalled, bejewelled and uniformed factotum in tow.

There is a People’s Party government in power now (or so it thinks), as such it may be a good idea for the toiling masses’ party to do the plebeian thing and send its uniformed minders back to where they came from. Such a move would also meet the requirements of poetic justice, since the practice of having uniformed sidekicks dance attendance on the man who is prime minister began with the party’s first stint in power.

Since ZAB’s two predecessors were military men, both Ayub and Yahya made do with an army officer who served as military secretary with limited functions. Ayub’s MS was Maj Gen M Rafi and Yahya’s Maj Gen M Ishaq, whom ZAB kept till he was replaced by Maj Gen Imtiaz Ali. ZAB was a man who loved razzmatazz and the ceremonial trappings of office. He also perhaps believed that a large ceremonial staff will send the message of civilian supremacy to those who every few years jump over the wall to capture radio and TV stations and make the same speech, the one beginning, “Meray aziz humwatno”.

Before long, there was a deputy military secretary and the three ADCs, representing the three services, put the number of uniformed factotums to five. ZAB also wanted a special coat of arms or insignia or emblem for the prime minister’s office. Letters were sent to a number of countries for their respective suggestions. I do not know what replies others sent but the reply from Paris said that it was against the French republican tradition that the prime minister, an elected representative of the people, should have any ceremonial staff or special emblem.

With the prime minister being attended by five serving officers in uniform, provincial governors and chief ministers were not going to be left behind and soon they had also packed their offices with these ceremonial and utterly unnecessary accoutrements. There have been many governments since ZAB, many chief ministers, many governors but no one has had the humility to do away with this foppery, this showmanship, this world of embroidered ones.

And it is not only the ceremonial staff that needs to be got rid of by the prime minister and the chief ministers, but also the magnificent mansions in which they have chosen to reside as if they were the Lot Sahib Bahadurs of the colonised land of kala log. Just look at the Governor’s House in Lahore where just one single individual lives with hundreds in attendance waiting for the moment when he would to snap his fingers to summon them. The land on which this grand mansion stands must be the costliest piece of real estate in the Subcontinent. How can such profligacy be defended or justified?

Economist Nadeem ul Haq has long advocated what we should do with the land on which the Governor’s House and its vast grounds stand. No one has taken notice of that. There is a new government in Pakistan now, so let it do away with these vestiges of colonial splendour. Only then will declarations such as ‘This is a people’s government’ have any credibility.

My own feeling is that we are destined to suffer more of the same.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

I met Chaudhry Zafarulla Khan just once. It was in the late 1960s. He was in Lahore and speaking at Government College, an event I was assigned to report on for the Pakistan Times, where I then worked. When I arrived, he had just stepped out of his car and I walked with him to the event. He told me that he would need to walk slowly because he had sciatica. That was the first time I had heard the word, so I asked him what it was, which he explained to me with great precision, something that was his hallmark. It was clear that sciatica was something one ought not to wish even for one’s worst enemy.

M. Yusuf Buch, who worked with Zafrulla at the United Nations during the great Kashmir debates of the 1950s and 1960s, assisting him in various ways, principally in drafting several of his speeches and statements, recalled that after Krishna Menon had finished one of his more vitriolic speeches about Pakistan, Aziz Ahmed was fuming. “Chaudhry Sahib, you should take his pants off,” he said to Zafraulla. The foreign minister’s calm reply was, “Aziz, if I do that, will you be willing to perform the necessary?” When he was well into his eighties, he was asked if people changed their views with old age. “Why don’t you go ask an old man?” he answered. His memory was phenomenal. Buch told me that once, while working on a speech, all he could remember of a quotation he wanted to use were a few words. When he told Zafrulla, he said, “That comes from a speech drafted by Chaudhry Muhammad Ali.” And then from memory, he dictated the entire paragraph in which those words occurred. He did not keep notes. His monumental autobiography Tehdis-e-Naima, which has hundreds of names and dates going back to the early years of the last century, was written entirely from memory. No one has so far found even one name or date to have been inaccurately recalled.

In 1995, Anwar Kahlon, who remained Zafrulla’s personal secretary and companion for most of his life, wrote a book to preserve his memories of this remarkable man, whose great services to Pakistan before its birth and after its establishment, are not even acknowledged today by his countrymen, just because he belonged to the Ahmediyya community. Kahlon’s book was privately printed and never really got circulated beyond his own circle. I was given a copy by a friend and I have read it to my delight, which is why I want to share some of the stories it contains.

During one of the Round Table Conferences, Zafrulla was invited to spend a day at Lady Astor’s country home, where he spotted a photograph of Lord Lothian, whom he knew. “Some malicious people say that he was in love with me,” she said. “Half the world is in love with you,” Zafrulla observed. She protested, saying he should read her mail, because half the letters were most disparaging. “Those are from the other half,” he said. Once in Delhi, on noticing the worried look on the face of the rickshaw driver whom Maulana Shaukat Ali, a big man, had flagged down, Zafrulla asked, “Why are you worried? Cart him in two installments.” All the Maulana could do was wave his stick at him. Zafrulla set up his law practice in Sialkot, from where he moved to Lahore. When asked why, he replied that one reason was Sialkot roads, which were very dusty, and he simply could not stand dusty shoes.

Zafrulla was never without his mean-spirited enemies, one of whom sent President Ayub a picture that showed his UN ambassador in light-hearted conversation with Indian ambassador Vijay Lakhshmi Pandit. Ayub passed it on to Foreign Secretary S.K. Delhavi, who scribbled on the file, “When a gentleman becomes a diplomat, he does not cease to be a gentleman.” Once while addressing the Legislative Assembly in Delhi, Zafrulla quoted a passage from one of Gandhi’s books, at which the Congress members began to shout that those were not Gandhi’s at all. Calmly, Zafrulla pulled out the book from his bag and read from it. He had quoted Gandhi from memory word for word. In 1942, Zafrulla was sent to Chungking to establish the Indian diplomatic mission. Once Madame Cheng Ki Shek said to him at dinner that it was a nice Chinese custom to offer steamed face towels. Zafrulla agreed, then suggested that Madame herself take advantage of the excellent custom. That would, of course, have entirely wiped off her heavy makeup. “You are being naughty,” she told him. When Begum Liaquat Ali Khan was sent as ambassador to Holland, Zafrulla said, “Here’s a woman who has been accredited by a woman (Queen Elizabeth) to a woman (Queen Juliana).” Once a Swiss girl asked him where he was off to “To Geneva, then to Cairo, then to Amman and on to Karachi,” he replied. “But eventually?” she asked. “Heaven, I hope,” he replied.

When Zafrulla was Pakistan’s UN ambassador, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the foreign minister, asked him to preside over a meeting of the Pakistani delegation to the General Assembly. “That is the foreign minister’s privilege, but thank you,” Zafrulla replied. A Pakistani living in England and married to an Englishwoman complained to Zafrulla that his wife was always picking on him for not speaking polite English. It so happened that some time later, Zafrulla visited the man’s house. “Do you want some tea?” the Englishwoman asked him. “No, thank you, Madam, I don’t want any tea. However, I would like some,” Zafrulla replied. Once when he was in a London hospital for tests, a nurse came into his room. Looking at the bearded frail old man lying in bed, she asked, “Do you understand English?” “A little,” he answered. It was only when he was leaving the hospital that she realised who he was. Once a young man requested him to pray that the parents of the girl he was in love with would agree to their marriage. Some years later, when Zafrulla ran into him, he asked how far his suit had progressed. “Oh, we got married and we have two children,” he replied. “Why didn’t you tell me? Even this morning, I prayed for you,” Zafrulla told him. When he was president of the UN General Assembly, he would ride in the front seat with his chauffeur, never in the back. He was utterly humble. As far as he could remember, he had never missed a prayer in his life. He would also rise during the night to offer tahajjud . His habits were simple. He would always place the trousers he had worn under his pillow so that in the morning, their crease would be restored. Whenever he would arrive in Pakistan, he would be carrying old socks and undershirts that needed to be darned. That does not mean he was tight. More than 100 poor students were always receiving stipends from him. Such things he did quietly, without fanfare.

This nation has not had the grace to acknowledge, much less thank, its real heroes. Will that ever come to pass? One can only wonder.

The horrifying things done to Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib were not aberrations so much as condoned behaviour, since it was overlooked if not actually encouraged by those in charge of the detention facility whose very name has now become a byword for sub-human treatment of prisoners.

One has to salute the American press which unearthed the atrocities being perpetrated at Abu Ghraib, in the same way as it has exposed the inhuman conditions in which prisoners were kept, at least initially, at Guantanamo. To its great credit, the American press continues to shine the light on what the establishment would prefer to remain under wraps.

Exposure, a report in the New Yorker magazine in March this year by journalist Philip Gourevitch and filmmaker Errol Morris, whose documentary Standard Operating Procedure is due for release this month, records what soldiers of a reserve military police unit saw when they first arrived at Abu Ghraib.

“It’s nothing but rubble, blown up buildings, dogs running all over the place, rabid dogs, burnt remains. The stench was unbearable.” The prison squatted on the desert, a wall of sheer concrete traced with barbed wire, picketed by watchtowers.

They write that the great number of Iraqi prisoners seized by the military were designated “security detainees”, a label that had gained currency in the war on terror to describe “unlawful combatants,” as well as others who had been denied POW status and could be held indefinitely in isolation and secrecy without judicial recourse. The great number of Abu Ghraib prisoners were placed under the authority of military intelligence officers who instructed MPs how to treat them. When the Abu Ghraib photographs became public, it was the MPs who were blamed. Low-ranking soldiers who took and appeared in the pictures were singled out for opprobrium and punishment. They were represented as rogues who acted out of depravity.

“Yet the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was de facto United States policy,” Gourevitch and Morris point out. “The authorisation of torture and the decriminalisation of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of captives in war time have been the defining legacies of the current Administration; and the rules of interrogation that produced the abuses documented…in the fall of 2003 were the direct expression of hostility towards international law and military doctrine that was found in the White House, the Vice President’s office, and at the highest levels of the Justice and Defence Departments.”

The Abu Ghraib rules were designed to create far more licence than restriction for interrogators who sought to break prisoners. The MPs were enlisted as enforcers for such practices as sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, sensory deprivation and the imposition of physical and psychological pain. There was no standard operating procedure that could draw the line between what was permissible and what was not. The MPs followed instructions given to them by military intelligence officers. The absence of a code was the code at Abu Ghraib.

The high value security detainees were held during and pending interrogation in single cells. Most of them were kept naked; others had their heads wrapped in women’s panties; still others were kept handcuffed in stress positions in cells with no lights and no windows. When a soldier would ask why, he would be told, “Hey! That’s the MI (military intelligence). That’s what MI does. That’s the MI thing.”

A Red Cross team that visited Abu Ghraib in October 2003, found many obstacles placed in its way. And what they saw only horrified them, especially when the abuses were justified as necessary to obtain information. The team returned two weeks later and in its report said that the military intelligence operation at the prison was plagued by gross and systematic violations of the Geneva Conventions. Some of the punishments ranged from squat thrusts and low-crawling in a naked state over concrete to being slapped and knocked around while hooded and made to stand on a cardboard box all night.

Sabrina Harman, the non-com who took most of the pictures that brought Abu Ghraib to the world’s attention had started out as a person who would not even have an ant stamped on; but brutality ends up brutalising those who witness it, which is what happened to her. She took pictures of dead prisoners and in every picture that she would have somebody take of her, she would flash a big smile and make the thumbs-up sign.

But ultimately it got to her. She wrote to a friend in the States, “Not many people know this s—t goes on. The only reason I want to be there is to get the pictures and prove that the US is not what they think. But I don’t know if I can take it mentally. What if that was me in their shoes. These people will be our future terrorist…I thought I could handle anything. I was wrong.”

Harman was court-martialled, given a six-month sentence, reduced in rank and given a bad-conduct discharge. The only person ranked above a staff sergeant to face a court martial for what went on at Abu Ghraib was cleared of criminal wrongdoing. No one has ever been charged for abuses at the prison that were not photographed.

Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s chilling poem written after the killings in Karachi following Ayub Khan’s election victory says it all: Kahin nahin hai, kahin bhi nahin lahoo ka suragh (Nowhere but nowhere is there any trace of the blood that was shed).

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Last time a People’s Party government was in office, my friend Husain Haqqani, roving ambassador No. 1 as I write, denied on scout’s honour that he had presented a copy of Machiavelli’s The Prince to the prime minister. His denial appeared in The Friday Times , although the report had been run elsewhere. His denial was followed by another, this time by Farhatullah Babar, who said that the prime minister did not read “that kind of book,” but did not rule out the possibility that it might have been read during the prime minister’s student days.

I was disappointed then and I am disappointed now that Machiavelli should have such a rotten image. I do not know what our new prime minister reads (he does read Faiz, I heard him say in a TV interview) but I would recommend that he read the sage of Florence. Even a casual reading is like dipping in a river flowing with the wisdom of statecraft. But since prime ministers are busy people, especially in their first 100 days, I am quite happy to give Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani a quick tour of Machiavelli’s master work. No ruler should be without it, be he democratically elected or otherwise.

The first thing the prime minister should do is to stay at home rather than fly from capital to capital as Shortcut used to do. Says Machiavelli, “Being on the spot, one can detect trouble at the start and deal with it immediately; if one is absent, it is discerned only when it has grown serious, and it is then too late.” In the same chapter, we find another gem: “When trouble is sensed well in advance, it can easily be remedied; if you wait for it to show itself, any medicine will be too late because the disease will have become incurable. So it is in politics. Political disorders can be quickly healed if they are seen well in advance (and only a prudent ruler has such foresight); when, for lack of a diagnosis, they are allowed to grow in such a way that everyone can recognise them, remedies are too late.” He goes on to observe that doing small injuries to others is ill-advised because men “will revenge themselves for small injuries, but cannot do so for great ones; the injury therefore that we do to a man must be such that we need not fear for his vengeance.” I am sure Mr Gillani is too nice a man to think of doing injury to anyone, big or small.

On FATA and Balochistan, a situation the prime minister will have to deal with sooner rather than later, Machiavelli could be his guide. “A city used to liberty can be more easily held by means of its citizens than in any other way, if you wish to preserve it.” Had Gen Musharraf only read Machiavelli, he would not have moved with shock and awe in Balochistan and FATA as he did. According to the sage, “It cannot be called virtue to kill one’s fellow citizens, betray one’s friends, be without faith, without pity and without religion; by these methods one may indeed gain power, but not glory.” And then more good advice, “Princes who are irresolute, follow the path of neutrality in order to escape immediate danger and usually come to grief.”

Since the PPP has a comfortable majority, one hopes it will not find itself tempted at some future juncture to do horse trading (what an innocent animal, Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan one said, and what a bad name it has been given in Pakistan!). If such a situation should present itself, Machivelli’s words should be borne in mind. “The friendship which is gained by purchase and not through grandeur and nobility of spirit is bought but not secured, and at a pinch is not to be expended at your service.” Some people have been critical of certain appointments made recently, but Machiavelli might have approved. “Princes, and especially new ones, have found more faith and more usefulness in those men, whom at the beginning of their power, they regarded with suspicion, than in those they at first confided in … they are the most compelled to serve them faithfully as they know they must by their deeds cancel the bad opinion previously held of them, and thus the prince will always derive greater help from them than those who, serving him with greater security, neglect his interests.”

And what about the Prince’s ministers? Machiavelli writes, “The first impression that one gets of a ruler and of his brains is from seeing the men that he has about him … There are three different kinds of brains, the one understands things unassisted, the other understands things when shown by others, the third understands neither alone nor with the explanation of others.” As for flatterers, the sage’s advice is priceless: “And this is with regard to flatterers, of which courts are full, because men take such pleasure in their own things and deceive themselves about them that they can with difficulty guard against this plague … There is no other way of guarding one’s self against flattery than by letting men understand that they will not offend you be speaking the truth. The Prince should get wise men to advise him, ‘giving them alone full liberty to speak the truth to him, but only of those things that he asks and of nothing else; but he must ask them about everything and hear their opinion, then he should make up his own mind, by himself.’ The Prince should put the policy agreed upon into effect right away and adhere to it rigidly. “Anyone who does not do so is ruined by flatterers or is constantly changing his mind because of conflicting advice: as a result he is held in low esteem.”

To Machiavelli’s wise words, I add those of that advertising genius, the late David Ogilivy, whose advice the new government would do well to follow when it comes to publicising its record in office. “The wrong advertising can actually reduce the sales of a product … Ford inserted advertisements in every other copy of the Reader’s Digest. At the end of the year, the people who had not been exposed to the advertising had bought more Fords than those who had.” Ogilvy would always say, “Do your homework. First study the product you are going to advertise. The more you know about it, the more likely you are to come up with a bid idea of selling it. If you are too lazy to do this kind of homework, you may occasionally lick into a successful campaign, but you will run the risk to skidding about on … ‘the slippery surface of irrelevant brilliance’.” Those who will want the prime minister to appear on television all times of day and night should be reminded of Ogilvy’s advice, “Only in the gravest case, should you show the client’s face.”

If the law of averages really operates in life, then there is every chance that the exciting messages I receive at the rate of ten to fifteen a week through my email, making me believe that my days of poverty are behind me now, are not all false. Only a month or two stand between that fire engine-red Ferrari and me.

My hopes rose last week when Miss Sara David wrote to me from Nigeria, unless it was Burkina Faso, with news of my windfall. Her message began, “Dear lovely one”, which threw me as no one has ever called me that, although I have been called a good deal else.

Miss David said she was writing to seek my partnership in the investment of her inheritance fund of $7.5 million. These happy messages invariably begin on a sad note. Miss David’s was no different. Her father died mysteriously last December and “it was very evident that he was poisoned to death”.

She went on, “In my culture, when a man dies, if he does not have a male child, the brothers shares [sic] his property leaving both the wife and the daughters empty-handed including the house they live in. This is the exact case with me as I am the only daughter of my father. I lost my mother when I was barely a year old and my father refused to remarry another wife because he felt solely responsible for my mother’s death.”

It turns out that Miss David’s father was always travelling on business and never paid any attention to his wife (I know several such blokes), so when she fell ill, he thought it was nothing and ignored her. So what did poor Mrs David do?

“My mother on her own resorted to self-medication. It was not until the illness degenerated that my father took my mother to hospital where she was diagnosed to find out [Ms David’s English needs attention] that hypatitis [she is not the only one who cannot spell that disease; two-thirds of my Pakistani friends cannot either] had eaten deep into her blood stream. She didn’t last long before she died.”

This is a brilliant sentence … not lasting long before dying. Sara David was just one when her mother died because she had not lasted long. Her father put in a huge deposit in the bank in Sara’s name but stipulated that only when Sara reached the age of 24, would she have direct access to the money. Sara is only 21, which is where I come in.

She needs a guardian and I am the lucky one she has chosen to be her guardian and her “foreign partner”. Her male relatives she writes do not know about this stash. The funds will be transferred to me “now, that you have signified your interest to partner with me” (how come I don’t remember doing that!. She closes with the words “Talk to you the more.”

But I think I will pass this kind offer because I have another which comes from the anti-fraud unit of the Foreign Funds Remittance Office in Lagos from the desk of Mrs Sndra Mike. It begins with a warning: Be careful of hoodlums. I am told next that my mail has been received (which I have never sent) and that “you congratulations for your success as you comply earnestly with above officially stipulated directives and advice to contact the bank that is going to pay you, your money or funds with is contact informations.”

I am instructed to call Mr JA Oboyeni at the given number. The next bit is quite perplexing but what of it since I am going to be rich very soon with those Nigerian dollars. Miss Mike’s English needs some serious attention.

She writes, “Be advice that as soon as you contact the bank in the matter of your payment send this office email to no want is going on and want you have to do next to received your funds payment to your account number in your bank.”

She concludes: “Thanks and God bless you and good new your funds will be transfer to you by this office of the foreign funds remittance anti-fraud unit, Lagos, Nigeria.” To clinch the issue, she also attaches a picture of hers.

I am greatly tempted to get in touch with Miss Mike of Lagos but then Mr Salif Musa of the Bank of Africa from Burkina Faso comes up with an even more attractive offer. He warns me to keep his message “top secret” because he wants to transfer $10.5 million to me.

“I have the courage to look for a reliable and Honest Person who will be capable for this important business Transaction, believing that you will never let me down either now or in Future,” he writes. And now for the bad news. One Ron Morris died with his entire family in an air accident on Christmas Day 2003, whose cash is being sent to me because Mr Musa does not know any foreigner and he hopes I will not let him down. Perish the thought, Mr Musa, I will walk to Burkina Faso, after I have looked it up on the map, to collect my loot.

But before I could take up Mr Musa’s generous offer, I found a command from the President of Nigeria and the FBI (didn’t know the two worked together) saying that my inheritance file had been verified and I will soon be sent an ATM card, as long as I was willing to withdraw no more than $5,000 a day, no matter where in the world I was. All I am supposed to do is provide my full name, phone, fax number, address, age and occupation.

I am afraid the moment I inform my benefactor that I am an akhbarwala, the offer would be withdrawn. Maybe I should say instead that I used to be a minister in Shaukat ‘Shortcut’ Aziz’s cabinet. But what if he asks me who Shortcut is! So, I think, I will snap the offer I have just received from Canary Islands.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

The great F.E. Chaudhry, Chacha to all journalists, especially to those who had the privilege – and more pleasure than privilege – of working with him at the old Pakistan Times , has turned 99. And that takes some doing.

Chacha is all there, his memory is as sharp as it always was, considering that he has not forgotten the money many of us owe him, including me. But what we owe him is more than money. It is his presence that I can only liken to a great shade tree that has provided comfort and solace to more than one generation of journalists. So much around him has changed but Chacha is the same as he always was, with one exception: mobility. He doesn’t get around all that much; but save that he won’t be in the next Lahore walkathon, he is in the pink of health. His blood pressure is like that of a baby and he pops no pills as far as I know. In the case some are given to him, he throws them out the window when nobody is looking. Chacha’s great humour, his upbeat outlook on life and people, his prodigious memory and his abiding affection for journalists and journalism keep him going. When he turns 100 next year, I hope the Government of Pakistan will issue a stamp in his honour and pin the highest medal it has on Chacha’s chest.

Chacha is truly the doyen of press photographers, having been the first one in the city to take to the profession full-time. Earlier, he taught at St. Anthony’s and our late editor at the Pakistan Times , Khawaja M. Asaf, was among his students. Long before independence, Chacha worked freelance for many years and his pictures were printed all over India, and with regularity, in the country’s principal news and picture weekly of the time, The Illustrated Weekly of India . He also filed for The Statesman and other leading dailies of the times. Chacha’s coverage of the 1947 holocaust and its aftermath have become an ingredient of Pakistan’s history.

Until a couple of years ago, Chacha was living all by himself at 7/10 Jail Road, Lahore, but when he broke a bone once, his son, the 1965 PAF air war hero, Group Captain Cecil Chaudhry, SJ, insisted that he move in with him. Chacha, who has always been fiercely independent, continues to develop schemes to get away to his old haunt. Knowing Chacha, if he does give Cecil the slip, it will cause me the least surprise. In his Jail Road place, he used to keep his old cameras, clippings, photographs and his late wife’s huge collection of dolls and matchboxes. Among his pictures was one of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, fully padded, going in to bat for the Pakistan Times XI. Faiz’ great ambition when he was growing up, I add, was not to be a poet but a test cricketer. Had he become one, he would have been a matchless timer of the ball. Great timers like Majid Jehangir Khan play late because of their perfect eye. They are invariably laidback characters, as Faiz was. He took his own time doing things and when he did them, he made them look easy, as great batsmen who play the ball late do.

But back to Chacha. He was among the first to be offered a job at The Pakistan Times by Mian Iftikharuddin in 1947, before Pakistan came into being. When I joined the paper in 1967, the first thing I learnt was, “Don’t mess with Chacha.” By now he had an assistant, but he trusted no one except himself when the occasion was important. He would always be first on the scene and, while others would be found scampering in, Chacha would be leaving on his Quickly, on which I remember taking some hazardous rides in the pillion seat. Chacha never wasted time when taking pictures. He wasn’t one of those who keep clicking away. He would choose his perch, his angle, aim his camera at the subject, take a couple of pictures and speed away on his Quickly. I recall that one of Chacha’s pictures printed on the front page of the Pakistan Times in the early days of the movement against Ayub Khan became a kind of rallying cry and was often seen mounted on posters carried in student marches on the streets of Lahore.

Chacha once recalled an exchange with Mian Iftikharuddin, who had asked him to go to Gujranwala to cover a meeting of his Azad Pakistan Party. Chacha gave it a miss and when asked by the man who owned the Progressive Papers Limited why he hadn’t turned up, replied that he had “more important” events to cover “right here in Lahore.” Mian Iftikharuddin, rebuffed in front of several people, reacted sharply. If he was a proud Arain, Chacha was a Jat, so he said to Mian Iftikharuddin, “ O Mian, mein teri naukri nahin karni.” And he went home. Early next morning, Chacha’s wife woke him up and told him that out there in front of the house was Mian Iftikharuddin sitting in his car. “I have come to apologise and take Chaudhry back,” he said. Chacha said he was not interested. He had left and that was that. Mian Iftikharuddin replied in Punjabi, “ Ley phair Chaudhri mein vi dekhna vaan too keenvain chudd kai jaana vain.” Chacha finally melted when his wife told him not to send Mian back “empty-handed.” The Pakistan Times was a fraternity, and there was a spirit of camaraderie that existed among those who worked for it, from Iftikharuddin to the humblest press worker.

Every newspaper in Lahore sends Chacha a free copy (except he assured me last year, my own Daily Times ), and he spends the morning going through them all. He also keeps himself informed of old PPL friends and always has news, especially when one of the old hands has passed on. I once called Chacha PPL’s Lost and Found Office.

There were only two from amongst us who belonged to one of the city clubs. Safdar Mir, whose Cultural Notes was published under his pen name Zeno, was a member of the Commercial Club in Bagh-e-Jinnah (if that indeed was its name), and Chacha, who was a member of the 77 Club, off Abbot Road. When in a generous mood, Chacha would take one or more of us to the Club and treat us to that certain chilled drink which makes summer afternoons in Lahore bearable. Whenever I return to Lahore, I go past the old PPL building, long since abandoned, though it still stands in Rattan Chand Road, haunted by the days that were and, as I wrote some years ago, haunted perhaps by the ghost of Z.A. Suleri, looking for another stint as Editor-in-Chief.

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