What the Pakistani PM should have actually said

What was special about the prime minister’s (PM) address to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) this year? Except, of course, the prime minister was visiting New York — the Big Apple — after a gap, perhaps; on a state junket; with a group of hangers-on who were there to make his every move appear and sound important.

Except, of course, back home, around a hundred Christians had just been massacred by Muslim zealots pervasive in the land he ruled. And the entire world, just simply held its breath to see what shape and at what cost, will such a dialogue happen. In the absence of which dialogue, a void stared down onto his hapless nation with a hope that someone will fill it in with follow-up initiatives before initiative returned to the terror machine, enabling them to drive their agenda rather than a government that minds the state, its structures and its arsenals, both conventional and nuclear. Except that a severe earthquake of some very high seismic ratings flattened vast stretches of his country and hundreds lost their lives. This was different. But then, perhaps not. The PM marched on with his entourage and the hangers-on to the shores of the Big Apple.

The PM had spoken already at home to his people after about 75 days of having held power and wasn’t found much impressive with either his conception or vision; nor was he spirited enough to transfer some hope to his people. He was saddened all right with the plight that he inherited, but much more than he, his people were the poorer for it, simply because they lived every moment of that plight. What then could he say to the world at large when the more dominant neighbour had almost closed his space and options before he crossed the seven seas to the farthest shores; and terrorists ruled the roost at home. The events at the LoC had already dictated the breadth and the depth — narrow and shallow — of the dialogue that a listless and a lame duck Manmohan could offer to an equally listless Sharif. What wisdom then were we tuned to receiving? The disgust was with those who feigned a miracle. I have a different explanation — ‘Paani vich madhaani’. If not for this, our plight may have been far less.

Many years back, when I was on a visit to another country with the air chief — and just as the PM this year, found a convenient transit in London — news came of two C-130s running into each other on ground while taxiing, that caused not only some loss of precious lives but a huge denudation of the limited transport inventory of the air force. The chief asked for arrangements to be made to head home. We were back the next morning and the chief was at hand to share the grief of the bereaved families, as indeed would a few for the unimaginable loss. No, not the prime minister. His inventory was intact and the families were too distant and low in the pecking order to seek his personal attention. There is always a cost-benefit analysis that every decision-maker goes through in his mind when a judgment is needed in a situation. Usually, his instinct will mostly be right, but then, other influences creep up corrupting the process; greed, personal inducement and crony crowding — egging the PM to stay the course. And stay, he did.

And then he spoke. It was straight from the class of Easy English — a replacement subject for those who could not master the intricacies of the mainstream English language course; and found depiction of thought too complex in either word choice or sentence formulation. But then, there is always the facility of one’s native language too; and many resort to remain in that domain, even if they are perfect speakers of the English language. We were told that the PM gave a tough message, in simple words. To whom? And what was the message? One could only see a lot of explanations by a beleaguered prime minister of a beleaguered country. A prime minister on the defensive and sullen and uninspiring; hardly convincing.

This is what would have made better sense, even in easy English — on Afghanistan: “Pakistan has carried the burden for the world with unmatchable sacrifice in blood and kind while acting as a buffer to a transnational terrorist movement. We have successfully stopped the train of terror from seeping through to other neighbouring nations by fully absorbing the impact of a most complex war within. Next month, as I meet President Obama, I will urge him to unplug all efforts towards a political settlement of the problem that is now coming to a close. Between Presidents Obama, Karzai and I, we need to find that elusive framework that will enable an inclusive democratic set-up that will ensure a stable, peaceful and a prosperous Afghanistan. The peoples of the region deserve a break from this long war.”

To Manmohan (knowing he is on his weakest politically, score some brownie points): “I urge India’s prime minister to break the shackles of legacy and entrenched sentiment, and seek with me more innovative and relevant solutions to the numerous issues that bedevil the relationship of our two countries. We shall have to think anew the realities as exist between our nations and mindful of the horrendous consequences of even a simple conflict, find peace through cooperative and complementary coexistence. The formulations of terror and its manifestations are even more complex now than when we first began blaming each other for it; it remains a pervasive threat that we can only fight together. I look forward to working with the Indian PM to fight the machine that has the potential to unravel peace in South Asia.”

Perish the thought. For the next time, PM, please get a better speech writer. Most in the audience shunned Easy English for a normal course.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 5^th, 2013.

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