RAWALPINDI: The following account is one that I am an eyewitness to. Former US president Dwight Eisenhower, who had recently returned from Paris after attending a Nato conference, was holding his usual first of the month ‘meet the press’ conference on December 1, 1955. A lady reporter, whose name I do not remember, known for her caustically biting questions, asked the president, “Mr President, is it correct that the presidential plane Air Force One, on its return voyage from Paris, first went to Gettysburg to offload Nancy Eisenhower there before returning to Washington DC?” There was a hush in the hall. The television cameras zoomed in on the face of the president, where, as if from nowhere, had suddenly appeared big beads of perspiration on his broad forehead, despite the cold of December. His mouth went dry and rolling his tongue over the dry lips, the president of the mightiest nation could only stutter, “I… I am prepared to reimburse to the exchequer the extra expenditure for this detour.”
“No, no, Mr President, I am sure Uncle Sam can afford such a luxury to the First Lady, I just wanted to be sure if it was correct that the plane did go to Gettysburg before landing at Washington DC,” retorted the reporter.
And here, in our land of the pure, Mr Yousaf Raza Gilani, on merely being elected the leader of the house, took the presidential plane to Karachi, along with his family and a big entourage, to attend the wedding of his son and returned the next evening via the same plane to be sworn in as the prime minister of Pakistan. No one dared ask him in what capacity he had used the plane. Was the leader of the house entitled to use the official plane and that, too, for a purely private event? Mind you, he was not the prime minister then; he was only an elected leader of the house. He took the oath of office the next evening and even as prime minister, he could not use the official plane for his entirely private and personal use. Who cares here in Pakistan?
Could someone — say, the chief justice of Pakistan — take suo-motu notice of such flagrant misuse of government property?
Colonel (retd) Riaz Jafri
Published in The Express Tribune, September 11th, 2015.
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