Pakistan’s many embarrassments

Islamabad diary
It is clearer now than before: Nawaz Sharif should not have gone to attend Narendra Modi’s swearing-in ceremony. While it could achieve nothing it made Pakistan look a bit like a vassal state paying homage to a greater power. Not that the Sharifs can be made to realise this, such niceties perhaps beyond them. But Pakistan lining up with other South Asian leaders to attend the jamboree wasn’t much calculated to uplift national pride.
Nawaz Sharif’s attending the UN General Assembly session and there addressing an empty hall was a bigger embarrassment. Even if he was trying to escape from his domestic worries it wasn’t such a smart idea. Who are his advisers? Who does he listen to?
Pakistan’s problem is not Narendra Modi. Its problem is its bumbling leadership, gifts of the Mandate. A leadership at sea in the domestic arena, how does it behave with confidence on the international stage?
It would be a good idea if the PM could be persuaded to cut his foreign visits. While they can achieve nothing they can be a source of embarrassment for the country because of the PM’s unsure performance. How many Pakistanis would have felt proud watching their PM fidgeting and nervously fumbling with his notes as he sat with President Obama (this was last year) in the Oval Office?
Private trips are a different matter. Pakistani leaders can’t do without their trips to London and the present PM is lucky to have luxury apartments and substantial property interests there. Medical checkups there are a must too. But there should be a civil-military consensus on no more official foreign visits for him. The risk is just too great.
Look at Pakistan’s foreign policy trio – no, troika sounds more impressive. The PM himself who holds the foreign policy portfolio – does he fancy his foreign policy expertise? – Sartaj Aziz and Tariq Fatemi. The heart sinks. What have we done to deserve this? We’ve had outright buffoons heading the foreign office before. Now – how to put this delicately? – this constellation of inadequacy.
Mercifully, the Punjab’s Khadim-e-Aala has stopped being his own foreign minister. Earlier we had three foreign policies: the non-foreign policy of the foreign office, the more serious stuff coming from General Headquarters and then the foreign policy of Punjab, the Khadim-e-Aala setting out every other week for China, Turkey or the UK. The dharnas and jalsas have effectively deprived Punjab of this solo take on foreign affairs.
Let us understand, however, that Pakistan is not unique in suffering the consequences of clueless leadership. It is an occupational hazard which can strike any country, even the luckiest or the most well placed. George W Bush who because of his accomplishments could leave anyone speechless played with the destiny of the United States for eight years, the Iraq war and the present turmoil in the Middle East his contribution to world history. There have been monuments to dullness in the White House such as Calvin Coolidge and Warren Harding, both lampooned mercilessly in the writings of that uncrowned king of American journalism, W H Mencken, his lance dipped in such acid and vinegar that you helplessly held on to your sides. America survived them all, the dullards and the humbugs.
The closest thing to Uriah Heep – icon of snivelling hypocrisy in David Copperfield – in British politics was the honourable Tony Blair. Hand it to the British for not chopping things off – that’s our style – but easing them out, the way the Tories eased out Margaret Thatcher, in one of those internal party coups which are a Tory specialty; and the way Tony Blair was pushed out of the door by the Labour Party, to be replaced by Gordon Brown, that monument to Scottish dullness.
So no need for Pakistanis to tremble at the thought of Nawaz Sharif being around for some more time. Pakistan has survived greater disasters. This too will pass – but provided we have that consensus on cutting his foreign visits.
On the eve of the Second World War Neville Chamberlain, then British PM, had become an embarrassment for his country because of his policy of appeasement towards Hitler. As the war started to go badly, there was a growing sense of unease and pressure mounted on him to go. Speaking to a rapt House of Commons, the mood such that members hung on his every word, Leo Amery, a senior parliamentarian, delivered this shattering attack, “I have quoted certain words of Oliver Cromwell. I will quote some other words….This is what Cromwell said to the Long Parliament when he thought it was no longer fit to conduct the affairs of the nation: ‘You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go’.”
Fortunately, we are not in the midst of war. To our further good fortune, the same words if addressed to Nawaz Sharif probably would not make much of an impression. He would wonder what you were talking about.
So we are in the midst of an election campaign with no elections in sight. Mid-term elections is a phrase which has come to play on the lips of politicians. But even as they chant it they have not the slightest idea how they would happen…what magic hand would force them.
This is not to say the rallies are having no effect. The huge crowds drawn to them, the pitiless attacks on the government by both Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri, are further paralysing a government not famous for much governance to begin with. We thus have a lame-duck administration in the first year and a half of its existence. And it still has three and a half years to go. But as Odysseus says, “Patience, stout heart, thou hast endured much worse than this.”
Although the nation will pay, just as with the PPP dispensation, a heavy price for this. There is, however, much to be said for the continuity argument…that democracy must not be disrupted. The PPP was wiped out in Punjab in the last elections, something which should have happened much earlier, because given the opportunity to complete its five-year term it was fully exposed. No room was left for excuses. And when the time came popular anger exacted vengeance at the polls.
The same thing is now happening with the PML-N…full exposure and no room for excuses, no opportunity of martyrdom, no going on and on about not being a chance to turn around the country. Not just the PML-N but sons, daughters, nieces and nephews are in power. So if they have already made a hash of things they have no Gen Musharraf, no October coup, to blame. This is Nawaz Sharif’s third attempt at running the country. It is proving a bigger disaster than his earlier two stints. The biggest inroads Imran Khan is making are in Punjab, the PML-N’s power base. It is in Punjab that the slogan ‘Go Nawaz Go’ has caught on the most.
This is exquisite Chinese torture, for both the Sharifs and the nation. While there is no early end in sight the end result should be good. With the PPP’s Punjab demise half the national stables stand cleaned. The other half are now in the process of being cleaned.
Email: winlust@yahoo.com