Fence mending: Military brass gathers at Presidency

Backchannel efforts to normalise working relations between the government and the military is starting to bear fruit.

ISLAMABAD:

One can only assume that the apparently frosty relations between the government and the military have started thawing.

In a telling move on Friday, the military brass, including Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, attended a ceremony in the Presidency where President Asif Ali Zardari conferred the award of Nishan-i-Imtiaz (military) on Naval Chief Admiral Mohammad Asif Sandila.

The government is at odds with the military over the Memogate scandal as the army chief claims the controversial memo is a reality while the government calls it a myth.

Currently, a high-powered judicial commission is investigating the matter and the man who set off the controversy, Mansoor Ijaz, is likely to appear before it sometime this month.

Analysts believe that holding Admiral Sandila’s decoration ceremony at the Presidency was a calculated move and was used by the government to send out a message that there was no confrontation or friction between the military establishment and the government.

Insiders in the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) also claimed that the presence of army chief General Kayani, who had recently skipped several similar functions, was a proof that backchannel efforts to normalise working relations between the government and the military had started bearing fruit.

(Read: That fractured relationship)

Published in The Express Tribune, January 21^st, 2012.