Pervaiz Rashid back in action with full force

ISLAMABAD: Senator Pervaiz Rashid is back in action with full force after a hiatus of 42 days during which he totally stayed away from the media glare following his exit as the federal information minister on the charge of not stopping the publication of “fake” and “concocted” leaked news.

He didn’t lead the government’s team on Friday on his own to respond to Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan’s threat to boycott a judicial commission if formed by the Supreme Court, but was specifically asked by his boss to do so.

Interestingly, when Pervaiz Rashid was required to step down on Oct 29 this year, he was not allowed by his party to give his side of the story by holding a presser although he was keen for that. However, he stuck to the party discipline and then refrained from any media encounter and later as well. He appeared before journalists only after he was instructed to brief them on the government’s stand.

Although he is yet to be restored in the cabinet, he led the official squad that usually reacts to the onslaught of the PTI and other opposition parties. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif thus accorded the due weight and importance that Pervaiz Rashid deserves, making him his chief unofficial spokesman.

A high-powered inquiry committee that had been assigned investigation into the leak is yet to share its findings with the people at large. But even before that Pervaiz Rashid has assumed his normal job without being restored as the information minister.

A set of the premier’s leading detractors, who had been pinning high hopes on the committee’s report with a view to ousting him, may be crestfallen over the former minister’s activation. All their predictions that he will go before the end of the current year stand razed. They are so much dejected now that they are in deep confusion and unable to make new forecasts about his fall.

The PTI, which had been receiving a severe battering from Pervaiz Rashid because of its unrelenting attack on the prime minister, is irked over his reactivation and has regretted the “opening of the doors” of the information ministry to him.

Since the present government assumed office in June 2013, only the past forty-two days had been “quite” for Pervaiz Rashid otherwise he had always been interacting with the media to project the government policies and to give its reaction on burning issues and assertions of its rivals.

A politician of Pervaiz Rashid’s ilk and standing is least bothered about holding a senior government position or being without it because of his temperament and commitment with his party and its chief. There had not been a single moment during this interlude when he had been repentant and remorseful about the treatment he had been meted out and his association with the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).

When three days back the prime minister held a top level meeting with his key ministers and party leaders to pick up the PML-N nominees for the slots of mayors of corporations and chairmen of district councils and municipal committees in Punjab, Pervaiz Rashid was found present there, which indicated that he was about to jump in the field again. It also demonstrated his importance and relevance despite not being a member of the cabinet.