Home Cooked Food, Ambassadorship & Brother Takes the Fall Also

From the Daily News: The government has decided to replace Pakistan’s Permanent Representative (PR) at the United Nations Munir Akram with former Sindh Assembly speaker Hussain Haroon, diplomatic sources told Daily Times on Friday. Akram was supposed to carry on as PR until 2009, but his meeting with PPP Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari in March brought his downfall, sources said. They said that during the meeting Akram tried to convince Zardari about the “demerits” of referring former premier Benazir Bhutto’s assassination case to the UN, “but this displeased Zardari who decided to replace Akram with Haroon”. Haroon is a close friend of Zardari who won the PPP leader’s affection while he was in prison in Karachi. Harroon used to send Zardari home-cooked food routinely and met him and looked after his medical needs. Meanwhile, Akram confirmed to correspondents at the UN that he would be leaving his post. Separately, the government has decided to withdraw Akram’s brother Zamir Akram’s nomination as Pakistan’s ambassador to Beijing, sources said.
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Ejaz Haider, Daily Times also chips in on this subject:

I am no idealist; if anything, I am a hardnosed realist. Political decision-making, especially in this country, happens close to the skin and often in disregard to larger-anything, call it national interest or what you will. Political governments bring with them political spoils; underhand appointments and deals abound, as do sinecures. Those who take seriously Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s homily about avoiding “nepotism and jobbery” live in the textbooks.