August 28, 2004 ☼ Foreign Affairs
This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.
Never mind he entered parliament in a deliberately arranged bye-election where the ISI’s political division went to great lengths to ensure that he won. Never mind that the manner in which he was foisted on parliament united even the most disparate elements of the anti-Musharraf opposition. Never mind all that, for as a ‘technocrat’ who is also wrongly described as an economist (he is a private banker) he was touted as a breath of fresh air that would focus on economic development and all those unimportant things like employment, health and education that the common Pakistani actually needs.
But in his first address to the national assembly, Prime Minister Aziz announced his four key priorities: improve the law & order situation, ‘modernise’ the armed forces, support the cause of Muslims in Kashmir and Palestine, and lastly, accelerate economic growth.
Aziz’s laundry list shows his priorities - America, Army and Allah, in that order. The ordinary Pakistani comes last almost as an afterthought. A successful private banker, after all, knows what his customer wants and delivers accordingly. That exactly is what Mr Shaukat Aziz has just demonstrated.
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