Is PM Sharif really pro-normalisation?

The hullabaloo over the readout of the phone call between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and President-elect Donald Trump seems to have died out. It has been replaced with the hullabaloo over the unbelievable treatment meted out to Sartaj Aziz while he was attending the Heart of Asia conference for Afghanistan, in Amritsar, East Punjab. This too will die down.

The prime minister is doing what he has been doing for three decades. He will invariably oversee another hullabaloo as early as this week. And the previous one will be forgotten. We are a more forgiving people than we’d like to think. Nawaz Sharif has banked on this benevolence for three decades. The feast shall continue.

Meanwhile, no one seems to want to talk about substantially reduced loadshedding. Or the speed with which metros seem to get built. Or the boom in retail businesses across the countries. Or the increased prospects for portfolio investments as the capital markets in this country respond to solid long-term potential. Many of us seem to only want to talk about this government’s failures – like that atrocious press release of the Trump phone call, or the absence of a coherent plan to manage India, and to woo Afghanistan, or the next gaffe, or mistake. Why do we whine on and on about this government’s failures without celebrating the things it is doing right?

Largely, because seeking credit for doing your job, and seeking a pass for not doing it are usually met with derision everywhere. If the government is building the infrastructure in this country, it is only doing what it was hired to do. PM Sharif’s job is to reduce loadshedding and enhance transportation connectivity. It says so, in black and white, in the PML-N manifesto. So, basically, he is doing his job. Only those that set the very lowest bar for human performance would expect a pat on the back for doing what is the basic minimum requirement.

The government also promised some other things. A big part of the PML-N manifesto is focused on the economy, and within it, the promise to establish a vast array of measures to enhance and build regional linkages and connectivity across the region, so that Pakistan can fulfil its destiny as perhaps the world’s most important (and hopefully, prosperous) hub for civilisational interaction and convergence. So far, geniuses like Gen Ziaul Haq and those of his ilk that have followed after him, have only secured conflict and war, as a product of Pakistan being a civilisational hub. The PML-N’s commitments to enhance trade and connectivity within the region are different from promises on health and education. The PML-N really does mean to build Pakistan’s economy, apparently.

Which is why seeing a press release that seemed to have been edited by some complete incompetent working at the PM Office or at PID (or worse, both) does offend one’s sensibilities. How Pakistan behaves with the country that happens to be its largest export market is important. That is what the US is: Pakistan’s largest export market. And talking to Trump was a good touch. So that amateur press release was a double whammy. Not only did it potentially make all future calls with US leaders subject to a much greater degree of care (read: reservation, and conservatism) on the US end, it also wasted a genuine opportunity to showcase Pakistan’s seriousness as a global and regional actor. It made a laughing stock of a country that is anything but.

But that press release is not the core disease. It is a symptom. When those of us that are privileged to interact with senior government officials have a chance to ask these officials why the promise of regional integration is not only unfulfilled but seems to slide further and further away from realisation, we are given two key responses. In both are the roots of the actual disease.

The first response is that the civilian-military disequilibrium doesn’t allow PM Sharif to do any of the amazing and wonderful things that he wants to. The second response is that the Hindutvadis in New Delhi have taken over the asylum, and there is just no talking to those extremists.

Both responses are bunkum, and they deserve to be thoroughly rejected. They insult the intelligence of Pakistanis, and they insult the capabilities and capacities of this country. Both responses undermine the actual power of the prime minister, and with it the importance of the will of the Pakistani people. In short, if you believe, as I do, that PM Sharif was elected, warts and all, to fulfil his electoral promises, and that those promises are not restricted to megawattage and roads, then his failures on those other promises are a serious worry.

With the appointment of General Qamar Javed Bajwa as chief of army staff, the prime minister has once again asserted, quite rightfully, the total autonomy that the people of Pakistan have vested in him to make the most important decisions about all aspects of national life that the constitution, laws, and rules of business allow him to.     

We know now that PM Sharif is powerful enough to have his choice of general run the army, not once, during this third term of his as PM, but now, twice. So the question is: what compulsion forces Gen Bajwa’s boss – the prime minister – from asserting his rightful authority in taking forward important conversations about Pakistan’s regional role?

Let’s deal with the problem of the military and intelligence community allegedly being unconvinced that trade with India is good for Pakistan. Honest observers need to ask two key questions about the government’s behaviour in order to test this. First, are soldiers or spies qualified to have a destiny-altering public policy issue like trade and regional connectivity? Second, has there been any effort to convince sceptical Pakistanis, no matter where they work, and what they do for a living, about the value of regional trade? On both, we can emphatically state, no and no.       

          But let’s say we went further in this exercise and deemed it necessary, as a result of our love for all things khaki, that GHQ and Aabpara should sign off on all trade policy. Just for the sake of argument. Then the question would be: how should they be convinced? Who would do the convincing? What kinds of data would be used to build the case? And perhaps most importantly, what would the tactic be in case they refused to listen to reason? Does anyone really believe these questions have been asked in Raiwind, or at the PM Office, or in a single cabinet meeting in the last three plus years? Even once?

As to the other issue, of India having taken a bad turn in adopting hardcore Hindu right wing aggression as its policy towards Pakistan? Frankly, any Pakistani with any pride should be insulted by the suggestion. It shouldn’t matter what approach India takes with Pakistan. Pakistan should be able to extract what it wants from India, based on the convictions of its elected leaders, and the skill of its diplomats.   

Would a leader who is serious about trade with India and serious about regional connectivity continue to operate his own office like a drawing room enterprise? Would he continue to weaken the Foreign Office digital footprint so that the PML-N Twitter handle gains followers? Would he continue to allow his daughter to be targeted by his political opponents as part of the opera of Pakistani politics? Would he continue to operate with no plan, no foreign minister, and no diplomatic strategy to contain threats and exploit opportunities?

The writer is an analyst and commentator.