POREG VIEW: Pakistan Punjab’s high profile governor, Salmaan Taseer, who has gone missing for around  three days,could be in Colombo, says the Lahore based Daily Times, with which Taseer family was associated.  Normally Pakistan politicians prefer Dubai for relief and recreation and also political confabulations away from the preying eyes of domestic media.  Dubai has everything that Colombo doesn’t have.  For Colombo to emerge as the recreation parlour of the world, it will take a while. It is only now President Rajapaksa has woken up to the potential and his casino plans are on the drawing board.

Taseer could have gone to Colombo in the footsteps of his boss, the President of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Asif Ali Zardari, who is also the President of Pakistan Republic. Zardari has just returned from Colombo where he had held forth on the great potential for trade and investment and security cooperation between the two countries. 

Taseer has a vested interest to prove to his boss that he has been more loyal than the average PPP satrap. Because his running spat with Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and out of the box efforts to corner the Nawaz brothers have not earned him any brownie points. Instead, he has become the spoiler of the carefully laid out Zardari plans for ‘IMF tax’ to replace the General Sales Tax. 

Poor Taseer! Even this cover has been blown up by the Sri Lankan version of WikiLeaks. In his case it is not a classified diplomatic cable that has been leaked purely to settle scores with someone whose face remains invisible. It is ‘undiplomatic’ speak of a diplomat.

Probably it was the relaxed atmosphere of the ‘diplomatic reception for celebrating birthday of Japanese emperor that made the Sri Lankan envoy to down his guard. 

It is also possible that Jayalath Weerakkody is given to straight talk having spent all his working life in the Lankan air force. If that is indeed the case,  President Rajapaksa cannot say that he is not forewarned of the pitfalls of sending loyal ‘ex-soldiers’ on sensitive diplomatic assignments.  That is beside the point.

In the Taseer context, Weerakkody offered a tantalising scoop to Muhammad Saleh Zaafar of the News International, who might have pestered him like only the Pakistani hacks can do, as they have learnt the art the hard way.

Whatever be the raison d’etre, the Zaafar scoop has blown the lid off a new scam at a time the confidence in the Zardari government has hit rock bottom. The Foreign Office in Islamabad has done a quick rescue act by saying that Taseer was very much in the country but frankly it is at best a half-hearted defence of a loyal PPP soldier.

Going by High Commissioner Jayalath Weerakkody’s remarks,  the Punjab Governor is a regular visitor to Colombo, firstly because he is a significant investor in the local stock exchange, and secondly because he is a big player in the local share market.  Moreover, being a high ranking constitutional functionary, Taseer is amongst the privileged few who are governed by ‘no visa’ regime in the SAARC region.

Sri Lanka share market is blooming these days. According to Weerakkody, visiting Sri Lanka from Pakistan is easy and anybody can make any number of trips unhindered by visa hiccups that normally trouble foreign visitors to the Emerald Island. 

A Pakistani national visited Sri Lanka 49 times in less than six months, but faced hurdles at the Bandaranayke airport the fiftieth time. “He was stopped and questioned about the purpose of his so frequent visits (to Sri Lanka), but he could not offer satisfactory reply. So he was denied his 50th entry”, the garrulous Lankan envoy is quoted as saying.

And offered reason for such visits. “Some people do visit Sri Lanka for pearls, drugs (medicines), and other small purchases”, the ambassador stated.

Envoy Weerakkody has enough food for thought to his President. Because it was Mahinda Rajapaksa who fostered close Lanka-Pak ties as a part of his grand strategy to bolster his war machine during the Eelam War IV.  Also because, WikiLeaks has declassified a US cable that says Colombo has emerged as the LeT’s launching base; LeT is a foot soldier of ISI, which in its turn is a part of the enterprise to usher in the Caliphate.