Our ‘prodigal sons’

Within the first year of our Independence, which woefully happened to be the last of his life, the Quaid-e-Azam was disillusioned with the scarcity of calibre and character in the country’s political hierarchy, which was no more than a bunch of self-serving, feudalist and elitist politicians who were to manage the newly independent Pakistan. Apparently, the situation has not changed and an acute scarcity of calibre and competence still persists in the country where we could not find even a single person among its 200 million people good enough for the ceremonial post of governor Punjab.

We had to import one from the land of our former colonial masters. Former British MP from Glasgow Chaudhry Mohammad Sarwar is our new Laat Saab in Lahore. He is said to have surrendered his British passport to be eligible for the high public office in Pakistan. This is exactly what our former interior minister had done. One is really not sure whether mere surrender of a British passport amounts to renunciation of the British citizenship. Even if Sarwar manages to free himself of the dual citizenship label, he still remains vulnerable to the key clauses of constitutional eligibility criteria. After all, no politician, not even in the UK, is without a skeleton in his cupboard.

There have already been allegations of ‘unproven’ political irregularities and business improprieties that reportedly blocked his nomination in the House of Lords for a life peerage in 2010. No wonder, he did not seek re-election on expiry of his term in 2010. It seems M Sarwar’s political career in the UK had come to an end and he could not find a better place than his native perch to start a new political career. The PML-N claims that as governor, Sarwar’s ‘calibre and qualities’ will be an asset for the country and for its people. What is being ignored here is that we need such assets more in the UK than here to best serve Pakistan’s interests in that country.

As a Glasgow MP, M Sarwar was a source of great strength to the expatriate Pakistanis in his constituency. He is also known to have taken a strong position against the war on Iraq and also on the issue of Gaza. In 2006, he was a signatory to an open letter to Tony Blair criticising British foreign policy. These are exactly the things he should have continued to do if he really wanted to serve his ancestral land. We need more of our distinguished expatriates like MP M Sarwar, Lord Nazir Ahmad, Sir Anwar Pervez and Baroness Saeeda Warsi not only in the UK but in other Western countries too. They will certainly lose all their calibre and class in this country’s dirty politics and praetorian culture.

We laud them all and encourage other Pakistani expatriates to emulate their example. If our dual nationals genuinely have the urge and desire to serve Pakistan, they could best do that by excelling in local politics, business, trade, media, sports, science and technology as the Indian expatriates do. Ironically, our corrupt political culture has been attracting many of our dual nationals as potential candidates for high-profile public offices. In doing so, they obviously opt to become part of our system where circumvention of laws through ingenious methods is a routine practice in our country. The constitutional provision on dual citizenship has been circumvented with impunity in our country for decades, with persons of divided allegiance managing to get elected to assemblies and getting appointed as ministers and to other public offices. But now with a strong judiciary, things can no longer be taken for granted. Only recently, the prime minister’s adviser on aviation, despite his eminent qualifications, had to resign because of the nationality issue.

Unfortunately, fixated as we are in our colonial mentality, we always look enviously at foreign passport-holders as our ‘assets’. We have had several of them as prime ministers, ministers and legislators. With no permanent constituencies of their own, they were always at the beck and call of an autocratic ruler, elected or unelected. We borrowed a caretaker prime minister from the World Bank in the early ’90s and then another from Citibank, first as finance minister in the late ’90s and later upgraded as prime minister in 2004, both with known foreign allegiance and banking credentials. Neither of them proved to be an asset to this country, and once done, every one of them disappeared in their fairylands.

Legally and morally, it is not fair for Pakistani dual-nationals to claim seats in our parliament or share in public offices in a bid to build their second careers in a country which they voluntarily left long ago. No one questions their ability or patriotism. But their oath to foreign allegiance does create conflict of interest with divided loyalties. They made their choice once and any reversal in that choice is never without questionable motives. Why should they be leaving their honoured positions to be part of a corrupt system they left long ago? They do send billions of dollars in home remittances. Do they? It is not they, but hundreds of thousands of our workers in the Gulf who never abandoned their Pakistani nationality and are still sending home every penny they earn with their sweat and blood.

India, by law, does not allow dual citizenship at all and yet millions of Non-Resident Indians (NRIs), now with special Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) status, even without being allowed the Indian passport or the right to vote or hold constitutional posts, remain a huge asset to their country of origin, not only in terms of remittances, trade and investment promotion and acquisition of knowledge and technology, but also in the form of high-profile key public positions they hold in the countries of their residence. Bobby Jindal and Nikki Haley are household names in America.

It is time our ‘prodigal sons and daughters’ also realised that by making a place for themselves in elected bodies and holding influential public offices in countries of their residence, they surely can look after the legitimate interests of their native ‘homeland’ more appropriately, without any conflict of interest or allegiance. Governor Sarwar was an asset to Pakistan as long as he was in Britain. Now he is only a non-consequential, at best liturgical entity in a corrupt system that he doesn’t even have the powers to fix right. Good luck to him, anyway.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 31^st, 2013.

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