President Zardari: A Zealous Entertainer

Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari has in a recent article in the Washington Post claimed that his Government shall not turn back from reforming the situation in Pakistan. President Zardari’s self-delusion appears more menacing than the threat of terrorism. I was more amused than surprised to read President Zardari’s tall claims.

The opening lines of the article set the tone for what follows:
“When I was elected President more than a year ago, Pakistan was in grave condition, strained by terrorism and a ravaged economy.”
President Zardari seems to believe that Pakistan is no longer in a grave condition and economy has improved. He refers to the threat of terrorism with a sense of nostalgia.
He claims to have introduced economic reforms, which though unpopular, were necessary and would prove beneficial in the long run. I could not help but think about his unique sense of economics displayed in 2008. President Zardari’s “sense of economics” was reported in a New York article in September 2008, here is an excerpt:
In April, Mr. Zardari told Ishaq Dar, the finance minister at the time and a member of Mr. Sharif’s party, which has since broken with Mr. Zardari, that he wanted the price the government paid farmers for wheat to be raised substantially as a way of rewarding an important constituency in Punjab Province, the nation’s most populous, according to two participants in the discussion with Mr. Zardari. The government would then have to heavily subsidize the cost of wheat to the consumer. When Mr. Dar asked Mr. Zardari how he thought the government would pay for the subsidy, Mr. Zardari replied, “Print the notes,” according to the two participants, a government official and an associate of Mr. Zardari’s. In an effort to solve the impasse over the subsidy, it was suggested that Mr. Zardari form a committee of experts. ‘I am the expert,’ Mr. Zardari said, according to his associate.
The two officials described another episode in May as the budget was being prepared. Mr. Zardari decided to scrap a proposed capital gains tax after a visit from a group of influential stockbrokers from the Karachi stock exchange, they said. The revenue from the capital gains tax, and from an income tax proposal on the rich, would have paid for an income support program for the poorest Pakistanis, they said. More than half of Pakistanis live on less than $2 a day, according to the World Bank.

Another claim made by President Zardari has left me speechless:
“Pakistan’s economic resurrection has been the product, primarily, of our own sweat and blood.”
What about the international downpour of aid into Pakistan. Mr. President?
And President Zardari does not shy from asserting that the international community is responsible for the current state of crisis in Pakistan:
If the community of developed democratic nations had, after our last democratic election, crafted an innovative development plan with the scope and vision of the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe after World War II, much greater economic, political and military stability would already have been achieved.

I was thinking that Conan and Leno were the only claimants for “The Tonight Show”!!