Less cribbing, more movement

Barack Obama visits India for the second time and enjoys the hospitality of both the Congress and the BJP. This says more about the stability and the democratic continuity of the country.

Indian politicians started working on their Constitution in December 1947 and within two years finished the task. Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly started the same task three days before Pakistan came into being and somehow completed it in 1956 but on October 7, 1958, it was abrogated. It takes another 13 years, two military dictators and dismemberment of Pakistan to finally give us a Constitution in 1973 to be abrogated again after four years.

So let us look at the quality of our institutions instead of worrying about who gets in and out of our neighbourhood. Obama comes to India and we are in a tailspin about how to counterbalance this. We Pakistanis have a tribal-feudal approach to interstate relations. We believe modern states will behave the way we behave in our personal relationships. Hence, the values of honour, friendship, brotherhood and ummah are attached to our state relations. Sadly, in the world of statecraft, hard economic, political and strategic interests decide the warmth and the frostiness of relations.

Last time the Chinese president had to postpone his visit to Pakistan because two political cousins had decided to overthrow the newly-elected government of Nawaz Sharif. Let us hope that we can have him back on our republic day on March 23. We have another important date on our calendars — March 3, the day of the Senate elections when almost half of the senators will be replaced. So far, the possibilities of Imran Khan’s PTI joining the system are not too bright. He has announced that only the members of the provincial assembly of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) will participate in the senate elections. Mr Khan has effectively deprived his Punjab party of entering the upper chamber of parliament. Earlier, he put his MNAs from K-P under stress when he forced them to submit resignations while their provincial assembly counterparts were allowed to function in the government. Many from his own party are critical of this because even if the PTI comes to power, it will need Senate members to govern effectively but it seems Mr Khan wants to use the issue of “rigged 2013” elections for the second round, not in the distant future.

Sadly, the Nawaz Sharif government seems not to have learnt from its blunders. The recent petrol crisis and widening power blackouts are pointers in this regard. Adhoc governance doesn’t look like a temporary season but a way of life. With 27 organisations still headless, many boards are still missing their crucial members, the personalised style of governance still reigns supreme.

Instead of improving and strengthening systems, the ruling party has become a machine with many moving parts — moving against one another. It has failed its first test during the petrol crisis. Now the minister of water and power has given the news that the power blackouts would continue till almost the end of this government’s tenure. The 20-point National Action Plan and the 21^st Amendment launched with big fanfare are losing steam. The war for hearts and minds has been reduced to two ‘M’s — madrassas and military courts. Judicial reform, Fata reforms, the Karachi operation, empowering the Balochistan government to handle the decades-long insurgency, have all fallen by the wayside.

So, instead of cribbing about Obama coming to our neighbourhood, let us put our own house in order. Remember, in interstate relations, there are no permanent friends, only interests.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 28^th,  2015.

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