Discussing the dire straits our poor country is in these days with a pessimistic friend who thinks the Fatherland has missed the last bus, I said there was hope yet, if only the government would just get up off its hands and DID something. To make the point I gave the example of the Pakistan Railways, a corrupt-to-the-core organisation which has been beaten into shape by one of the very few and far between efficient and hard-working and (obviously!) honest ministers in this military government, General Javed Ashraf Qazi. "Woh 'pagal'"? (That madman?) was my friend's reply. I was not in the least surprised by this reaction, for we have become so used to people in government bluffing their way through life; being indolent; being dishonest both intellectually and in every other way; most of them just floating along, careful not to rock anyone's boat so that they may not rock theirs. Anyone, therefore, who wants to do an honest day's work, who shakes the slumbering bureaucracy awake and who holds them to high standards is considered mad. Little wonder that we are in the soup, what? I should have thought that observing the progress the Railways has made under the pagal General Qazi, Mein General would have done well to have more pagals in his cabinet.

Sadly though, this government is as wishy-washy as any wishy-washy government before it. Status quo is what reigns supreme. Look at the increasing sectarian poison in the Land of the Pure, please. What really boggles the senses is that the sectarian killings are being put upon those who protest Pakistan's joining the anti-terrorist coalition. Could anything be further from the truth? Has sectarian violence only started now? Did we not have thousands of Shias, Ahmedis, and Christians brutally killed before we were kicked awake after 9/11? Why, 15 years ago, I saw with my own eyes fliers posted on Lahore's Lawrence Gardens trees exhorting the faithful: "Shia maro, jannat mein jao". Lets face the bitter truth, for God's sake.

Because we almost never do face the truth, let us for the sake of argument, take another tack - let us accept the government's word that this is a warning to Musharraf that our obscurant elements have not taken kindly to Pakistan helping in the rout of the Taliban. What then does the government intend to do about it? Will it just go on wringing its hands and wailing and whingeing? Since it is so sure that certain unhappy elements are indulging in this carnage, it surely must know who they are. Why then, does it not arrest and prosecute them? I mean, this is really rich.

Every single day we Pakistanis , as we say in the colloquial, put up new moons (Nia chand charhhatein hain). Every single day our actions make clear to the rest of the world that we are taking our own country apart quite nicely thank you very much. This must stop. The government must act immediately. Enough is bloody enough.

So then, we have a new Minister for Information, a man with some experience in that ministry having headed it during Mr Moeen Qureshi's care-taker government - incidentally one of the better governments that it has been the good fortune of our country to have from time to time. The Ministry of Information, however, was the one ministry which did not need a minister. Things were ticking along quite nicely, actually, Mein President putting it on the record that he was satisfied with its performance. Right he is, too. In my opinion, the duo of Anwar Mehmood and Rashid Qureshi brought a certain amount of professionalism to running the government's media affairs. What, then, prompted the new appointment?

Could it be that Pakistan had to have a minister for information because India's Sushma Swaraj was visiting? In which case it should have been someone as sharp-tongued as herself, someone like Sheikh Rashid (Tulli), and not the gentlemanly Memon. Or is it the case that two years into its term, the government finds that it is no nearer to making the lives of the people any better and that therefore it needs to "project" itself better? If the first is true then no great matter. If, however, the second is true then this government has fallen on the same slippery slope that others before it have slipped on. That happens when the leader allows himself/herself to become so isolated from reality that he/she begins to believe the lies told to him/her by those ill-meaning sycophants who surround them - those who give "sab accha" reports like dishonest Subedar Majors. The fact that the leaders do not see those lies in print (for they are lies) makes them desperate for "better coverage", and they flail about trying new faces as if the perception of their government will change in the minds of the ill-served populace of the country by merely making cosmetic changes.

For, please consider: what in heaven's name can Memon (even a hundred Memons) do when, lets go back, dozens of people are killed every other week, because they belong to another faith or belief or school of religious thought? What can any minister of information do when dacoits are abroad in our rural areas, and bank robbers and car-snatchers and kidnappers hold our cities in their murderous embrace? Nothing, absolutely nothing. The only way out is for the government to start acting like one ie, to start governing. Does it have the time to do that, however, having tied itself up into little knots pursuing extraneous matters such as the so-called election schedule? Read on.

No, it should not have the time, considering the effort being expended in engineering the outcome of the so-called elections, which seems to be an exercise in complete futility, and which from all indications will be disastrous for the country. Why, even Begum Abida Hussain, herself one of the leading figures of PML-L, has criticised the ongoing tamashas of the NRB. Even she has lambasted the government for trying to put in place a pliant parliament through increasing the technocrat and women seats to eighty-some, and the run-off system, whatever that is.

By the way what is this about Mr H U Beg, Commandant PAC, and two of his members being found to be "defaulters or working for some government institutions and were not performing their duties as they should"? Would they care to comment?

And now for three apologies. A reader has pointed out to me that H U Beg is not a CSP/DMG wallah, but belongs to the Income Tax Group. Whilst my correspondent says that Mr Beg "must be happy to be elevated", I must apologise to Mr Beg if I have inadvertently hurt him. Apologies are also due to those of my friends of the CSP/DMG who might have felt slighted. And to the Secretary Bahadur, Cabinet Division, who is not the administrative head of the CDA any longer. The point however, is whether the CDA's fire-brigade would have been any the better equipped and trained to put out the fire that destroyed the Shaheed-i-Millat Secretariat building in Islamabad the Beautiful had the Cabinet Division been in charge. I fear not. Incidentally, who has been held accountable for the pathetic response to that fire, the fire-engine driver? The chowkidar at the fire-brigade?