Lettergate

The MQM-P is now officially in the opposition camp, effectively making the government a minority in parliament. In a press conference attended by leaders of the joint opposition, the PPP and the MQM-P signed a detailed ‘Charter of Rights’ and promised to do better in their new working relationship. There was a faint expectation that perhaps the prime minister – who was supposed to address the nation on Wednesday evening but then didn’t – would announce he was stepping down, considering on paper his numbers are less than those of the opposition. However, it seems the government is planning to continue Lettergate and has now finally decided that parliament needs to be told about this ‘foreign conspiracy’ – in an in-camera session. Prime Minister Imran Khan also shared the contents of the letter with his cabinet yesterday as well as with journalists – who were not shown the exact letter but were told of its contents.

The letter is reportedly a memo/cable written by a Pakistani envoy posted in a foreign country, and is supposed to have conveyed to the government that the said foreign country’s officials had said that if the no-confidence vote were successful, everything would be forgiven. And that if Imran Khan were to stay in power, things could get difficult for Pakistan. There are of course speculations about which country it is, with the US making the top of the list. As has been explained by former diplomats and political analysts as well, the PTI government and PM Imran Khan may just have committed a diplomatic and foreign policy blunder because such communiques are a routine affair. Envoys posted in countries talk to that government’s government officials regularly and convey to their own governments what those countries’ officials say about them. The repercussions of outing such content in this conspiratorial way means that our Foreign Office and envoys may find themselves in a rather awkward position internationally. Insinuating that the political class too is involved in such a conspiracy against its own country is a dangerous game: we have seen the consequences of handing out certificates of patriotism and accusations of sedition and treason before and they have never ended well. Pakistan also cannot afford diplomatic isolation at this point.

The government must also realise that there was no international conspiracy that made Usman Buzdar chief executive of the country’s largest province, nor was there an international conspiracy that saw four finance ministers brought in three years or that a draconian law like Peca was amended to further curtail the freedom of the media. In this, the PTI government and Prime Minister Imran Khan need some introspection on what went wrong as far as governance and political alliances are concerned. The vote of no-confidence is a constitutional right which the government too has every right to challenge – with numbers and parliamentary strength. We hope the in-camera session will clarify the memo/letter matter and if there is indeed something this serious, then the people also have a right to be told exactly what is going on and what is being done to tackle this issue. Hinting at threats to the government and – if one PTI representative is to be believed – even to the PM’s life just makes things even murkier.