Bikini battles, bare-naked lies, and Pak power struggles

The raunchy image of two busty, bikini-clad women wrestling alluringly to a disco beat in a square ring while frenzied crowds cheer them on isn’t one that you would reasonably associate with the ongoing grim power struggle in Pakistan. But there’s a thin thread — about as thin as the spaghetti strap on the wresters’ bikini top — that tenuously connects these two parallel universes. And it comes in the form of Mansoor Ijaz, the Pakistani-American businessmen who is at the centre of the ‘Memogate’ scandal in Pakistan, who has popped up as a bit player in an adult music video that has been fished out of the Internet by an alert blogger. The racy video, which we’re not linking to (because it’s Not Safe For Workplace), but which can be accessed on YouTube, was evidently shot in 2004 for house music DJ Junior Jack’s single ‘Stupidisco’ (there’s the keyword for your search!). It features a WWF-style mock wrestlemania, billed as the ‘Battle of the Bikinis’, and has two enticing and minimally attired women going at each other in sexually suggestive ways for much of the 4 minute 30 seconds of the song. (In an even more explicit X-rated version of the video – which we’re definitely not linking to – the bikinis come off and the wrestlers are revealed to be as naked as the power ambitions of politicians everywhere.) But what connects this kinky girl-on-girl action music video to the decidedly testosterone-driven all-male club of Pakistani power politics is the cameo appearance, as a ringside commentator, of Ijaz, a key witness in a case before the Pakistan Supreme Court that threatens to bring down the Asif Ali Zardari government. [caption id=“attachment_187817” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“A video featuring WWF-style mock wrestlemania shows Ijaz in a cameo as a ringside commentator. Reuters”]  [/caption] Ijaz, as we’d noted here , is a US-based businessman who wrote a sensational op-ed in Financial Times last year exposing an alleged conspiracy by the Zardari government, which feared a military coup following the sneaky killing in May of Osama Bin Laden by US Navy Sea. According to Ijaz, soon after the Osama raid, Zardari feared that a humiliated and demoralised military would seek to re-establish itself as the “country’s saviour” and the last line of defence by overthrowing Zardari. Ijaz further claimed that a Pakistani diplomat (subsequently identified as the then Pakistani Ambassador to US Husain Haqqani, who is now facing trial in the Pakistan court on charges of treason) reached out to him to get a ‘memo’ across to the US administration seeking protection for the Zardari government from a military coup, in return for which Zardari would defang the troublesome ISI. That case, billed as “ memogate ”, has become the principal weapon of the Pakistani army and the ISI in their efforts to bring down the Zardari government whom they don’t trust one bit. Claiming that it was “treasonous” for an elected government to seek a foreign power’s help to act against the national army and the ISI, the two have initiated proceedings before the partisan Supreme Court against Haqqani. But their eventual target is the government of Zardari and Prime Minister of Yusuf Raza Gilani. That case is before the Supreme Court, and Ijaz has said is scheduled to travel to Pakistan on 24 January . His critics doubt he will turn up for fear of being arrested and used as a pawn, in the power struggle between the civilian government and the military-ISI establishment. Against that tense backroom drama, the raunchy ‘Studpidisco’ video provides some light relief. It surfaced when the Café Pyala blog fished it out, upon which it went viral on the Internet. Having been ‘outed’ as someone who appeared on a music video that features nudity (which is not embarrassing in itself, but, hey, we’re talking Pakistan now), Ijaz said he suspected that the release of the video was an attempt by Husain Haqqani to discredit him ahead of his testimony. Ijaz then narrated the curious circumstances in which he came to be in such a video. He had, he said, been travelling in Brussels, and had been sought out by his wife’s friend who was associated with the video. Evidently, the video crew needed someone to speak with an American accent – and he had stepped in. But he claimed incredulously that he wasn’t present for any part of the video where the naked girls were shown. But the Café Pyala blog nails that lie too: in a video of the making of that song, Ijaz is seen to be present during the shoot, which ends with the two women cavorting around in the nude. It’s one of those cases where the ones who are stark-naked may have conducted themselves with more decorum than the fully-clothed ones who are caught out on their bare-naked lies.