“Can you define lame duck?” “Good heavens what-ever for? It’s a concept that is alien in our part of the world.”
“How come?”
“Well, lame duck in my book is someone who holds an official portfolio, irrespective of whether it’s through a selection or through an election…”
“Or through a selection process.”
“Hmmm, are you an overseas Pakistani?”
“What?”
“You are either an overseas Pakistani or someone who has spent a long time in the West because our appointments are rarely if ever through a process, we want to appoint someone, the final appointer directs the short-listers to give names that would not be able to compete with the one he has already decided to appoint…”
“I get it, but what about the other end of the…the…animal so to speak?”
“Reference to the Man Who Must Remain Nameless…”
“In my book, an animal is not a neutral, see neutrality means taking a position that is down the middle, now take a tiger: if the tiger sees a gazelle and a water buffalo at the same time he is going to go for the easier target right…”
“Tiger is the emblem of the PML-N…”
“Coincidental.”
“What if the tiger directs the other tribe members to go for one victim say gazelle while he goes for the other – see that’s like having your cake and eating it too.”
“Hmmm, anyway a lame duck is one who is at the tail end of his tenure and no one is listening to him anymore and you tell me if anyone in a key position in Pakistan has ever been a lame duck?”
“Hmmm, not in the three pillars of state and not in the very foundation.”
“Right there are extensions and then the circling of the wagons.”
“Indeed but I hear that the Man Who Shall Remain Nameless, after being kicked out of the office that he held by Zardari sahib while the PML-N sat on the sidelines…”
“Nope, not gonna happen – not gonna be made the Caretaker Prime Minister.”
“What about Caretaker Any Minister Please!”
“That my friend can be negotiated.”
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023