comment: In support of the president —Munir Attaullah

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comment: In support of the president —Munir Attaullah

The president has travelled the world very successfully, mobilising desperately needed political and financial support (including assistance for IDPs) for our beleaguered country

Indians have recently re-affirmed their confidence in an incumbent leadership. Many consider that to be nothing short of a political miracle. It left me wondering if our current occupiers of high office have much of a chance of being re-elected by us ba-sha’oor lot.

The government certainly has its work cut out to do so, if current surveys of political sentiment are a guide to the future. Mr Sharif has, making all the right moves and noises, successfully managed a complete refurbishment of his image. The public, as per the opinion polls, now judges him very favourably. His past record now seems all but totally forgotten if not wholly forgiven.

And our media, well stocked with conservative right-wing ideologues, is not far behind the public, giving the PMLN leader the kid-glove treatment a reverential, almost fawning, respect brings in its wake.

In stark contrast, the political fortunes of Mr Zardari and his party seem in the doldrums. An instinctively hostile media has never quite accepted as legitimate or proper — even grudgingly — his spectacular but wholly accidental ascent to power.

We are an opinionated lot, with a healthy disrespect for those in power (but only as long as there seems no chance of getting close to them). Besides, the media is a natural opposition, and ours more so, given how pathologically obsessed most of our opinion makers are to always appear as the unsullied high priests of uncompromising public morality, and the righteous defenders of national honour.

So all that anguished hand wringing, niggling, and snide insinuations one is treated to everyday does not surprise me one little bit. The search for, and easy identification of, scapegoats is always a psychologically comforting exercise. It avoids that tedious business of self-introspection and getting to grips with those harsh realities that might otherwise discombobulate our set modes of thought. Oppositions do not have to make the hard and unpopular choices governments have to make.

Surprised I therefore am not that the political fortunes of the president and his party currently appear to be at their nadir. Yes, the CJ affair, in retrospect, was a costly miscalculation; and, perhaps, the government’s media team could be doing a better professional job. It is also quite possible that the mindset of our public (particularly that of the Punjabi lot) sits uncomfortably with the president’s generally business-like approach to politics and the practical affairs of state.

For, that yearning for a messiah, who cuts a stubbornly uncompromising heroic figure and is given to grand populist gestures, is not in sync with a laid back style that prefers to focus on substance rather than the frills, and moves determinedly forward with little fanfare, in a low-key, sober, and eminently realistic fashion, to do whatever is practically necessary to achieve some required goals.

What are those goals? Among all the many we need to work upon (for we have let much slip, abysmally) I identified four, some years ago, as being of fundamental importance. That is because tackling most other problems will be immensely facilitated if we first make significant headway with, respectively, achieving a semblance of political stability, growing the economy at a healthy rate, purposefully re-integrating with the international community (especially our neighbours), and overcoming the multi-pronged threats from religious extremism. It is, therefore, natural for me to judge the president’s overall performance in office from these practical perspectives.

And here, contrary to the carping of the mainstream media that leaves me very disappointed, there is much to applaud as far as I am concerned. Let us measure the achievements of the government by each of the four yardsticks I mentioned above.

Consider the political stability angle. Developing a good working relationship in Sindh with a traditionally bitter rival, the prickly and temperamental MQM, is a much under-rated accomplishment. But it was a must if the engine of our economy, Karachi, is to fire on all cylinders. In similar fashion, forging the necessary alliance with the ANP to jointly confront the biggest challenge that faces the country must also be viewed as a big political plus.

Readers will remember my view that, like it or not (and I don’t like it one bit), the Army will, for sometime to come, continue to exercise a pivotal role in national affairs. And I am not a believer in pissing against the wind. What this boils down to therefore (especially in present circumstances, where the Army has a frontline role) is a current need for our politicians to develop a good working relationship with that institution without subordinating themselves to it.

Here, by and large (apart from a few initial stumbles), the president seems to have a better grasp of this nettlesome conundrum than Mr Sharif, whose strident and confrontational calls for putting the ex-president on trial are unproductive if not dangerous.

And then there is the crucial political battle against the religious extremists. Was the president not the first (and for a long time the only leader of note) to unequivocally and publicly take a stand on this issue, and set an example that many still are hesitant to follow? True, it has cost his party much popularity (because of that ‘it is America’s war’ nonsense). But we should be glad that, again unlike Mr Sharif, he has done what desperately needed to be done.

Finally, and most importantly, there are those two issues of reviving the economy and re-integrating with the international community. These two issues are inextricably co-joined. And it pains me no end to note that all the president’s vigorous and untiring efforts here get scant credit in our media that loves to pontificate with its eyes wide shut.

The president has travelled the world very successfully, mobilising desperately needed political and financial support (including assistance for IDPs) for our beleaguered country. Who else do you think could have accomplished what he has managed to do? Yet what is his reward?

Here is a sample. That celebrated anchor of the ‘according to me’ programme, with his beguiling dissimulations so beloved by our public, let slip in a calculated throwaway aside the remark that ‘he does not know if the president’s escapist and frolicsome junkets abroad actually cost the nation more than the money allegedly raised’.

Really, now! Is some simple arithmetic too tedious and lowbrow for our intellectuals? Does what was said strike you as fair comment?

In another recent programme, the good doctor weaved another of his tangled webs to all but say it was not BB but Asif Zardari all along who had been secretly chosen by the Americans (presumably during his stay in New York) as their point person in Pakistan. The implication was not lost on the viewer: BB’s assassination was another carefully planned conspiracy (with the consent of the husband?) to eventually vault their own man to the top spot.

Keep it up, doctor. Your fantasies are a credit to your adopted profession.

Meanwhile, I urge the president to ignore all such nonsense, and carry on doing what he is doing — and has to do — for the long-term good of the country. The economy will revive, the extremists will be defeated, and even national sanity will prevail in due course in our dealings with neighbours and the world at large.

The next elections are a long way away, and the tide can turn.

The writer is a businessman. A selection of his columns is now available in book form. Visit munirattaullah.com