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Anjum Niaz
Thursday, May 16, 2013
From Print Edition
Memo from USA
If not now, when - the right man for the right job? One wrong step by Nawaz Sharif will then be downhill all the way. Names for some posts have already been leaked to the press. Bad news. They are the same old, tired faces.
Beware, megaphone, please, of professional carpetbaggers of all shades and stripes, of all strata, of all occupations, retired and serving, from bureaucrats to businessmen, from media to self-appointed experts in diplomacy, finance, public affairs, human rights, gender issues, environment and law. They will worm their way for face time with the man most in demand today.
Nawaz Sharif returns to hold the reins after a 14-year long hiatus. Londons Economist that accurately predicted Sharifs winning seats and declared him the presumptive prime minister carries a flamboyant account of a lunch that the PM-in-waiting lobbed out for the foreign press. Apart from the extravaganza seen at the Raiwind Estate, heres how the column headlined Chez Sharif opens: Pakistans bigwigs sniffing for jobs queue at his residence in Lahore. Three days ago everyone you met on the street was planning to vote for Imran Khan. Today all proudly explain how they voted for Mr Sharif.
Five years ago, it was the same scene at Bilawal House. For fear of losing some friends, let me not name the people who came each day to sit and wait for Zardari to call them in. The person taking the roll-call and deciding who should get royal audience was his sister Faryal Talpur. Diplomats, too, turned up in the hope that the kingmaker would meet them. Sherry Rehman was in charge and chose which ambassador got preference. Anne Paterson, the American ambassador, for reasons all know well, smugly sallied forth to huddle with Zardari often. The beaming duos photos were a common sight in newspapers then.
Fast forward to the present: overnight new faces have suddenly cropped up on private TV channels to sing Sharifs hosannas. Some others have left Kaptan Imran Khan by the wayside and gone across to Janab Mian Nawaz Sharif. The state owned television, renowned for debasing leaders out of power and slavishly revering those in power, has also cobbled together analysts hired to laud the great man previously a has-been. Stop this flummery.
Beware, megaphone, please, of windbags whose intellectual weightlessness is in overdrive. Whoever is appointed the information minister (personally I feel this portfolio should be eliminated) must never return to the old practice of pleasing lifafa journalists. Nor must he waste public money taking freeloaders on foreign junkets.
Nawaz Sharif batted well while talking of drones during his electioneering. Unlike Imran Khan, he didnt scream blue murder. He didnt declare shooting them down the day he becomes the PM. Nor did he pick quarrels with neighbours India and Afghanistan to score cheap shots. With his eye on the ball, his performance was tempered with caution, maturity and foresight. Whoever was his foreign affairs guru should continue in the same job, preventing anyone from swerving Mian Sahibs path of friendship with all.
Not surprisingly then, Barack Obama, Manmohan Singh and Karzai dialled their good wishes for Nawaz Sharif. Obama went the extra mile to praise his valiant campaign and expressed a wish to meet him soon.
Not so fast, warned Pakistans former envoy to the US, Husain Haqqani. Wanted by the Supreme Court in the Memogate case, he was the first to throw a spanner in Sharifs work. Haqqani rushed to address a press conference in Washington called by the New York based Council on Foreign Relations. Holding forth, he cast Pakistans future prime minister as one whose intentions to fight terror were suspect. This was a blunt warning to America and India not to trust Sharifs undertaking to fight terror. Mr Haqqani faulted Mr Sharif for the creation of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a virulently anti-India militant movement, reported the AFP.
Haqqani further cautioned saying he [Sharif] will definitely try to assert himself far more than past civilian rulers have, including him [Sharif himself] in his previous incarnation. Only the discredited Haqqani can translate this convoluted syntax.
Imran Khan, unlike Sharif, received poor advice vis-à-vis Pakistans relations with its neighbours and America, despite enjoying the wise counsel of three former foreign ministers Aseff Ahmad Ali, Khurshid Kasuri and Shah Mehmood Qureshi. Did the three party stalwarts advise him to say that Pakistan didnt need help from anyone, especially Uncle Sam; it was quite capable of generating its own resources financial, military, industrial and technological?
Seen and unseen forces, foreign or indigenous, traditionally influence the outcome of elections in Pakistan. Dont forget the NRO that opened the door for our exiled politicians to return. The State Department, British Foreign Office and the Saudis together jump-started the engines of democracy in 2007. It was not out of love or pity for Pakistanis but for continuing their war on terror. Perhaps they discovered Musharraf shortchanging them. Placing a robust counterweight like Benazir Bhutto was planned. President Bush was no longer enamoured by his tight buddy who had even tasted the delights of Camp David, the official retreat of US presidents.
We need another number to dial or words to this effect became viral when a senior Bush official went public to suggest that America should look for an alternative to Musharraf. Despite signing a secret deal with Washington permitting drone strikes (as Musharraf admitted to CNN last month) he had perhaps outlived his usefulness and had to be let go.
While Benazir was killed, her husband stepped into toe the American agenda. His prime minister Yousuf Gilani is on record telling the then US ambassador, Anne Patterson, that the Zardari government was okay with the drone attacks. In a cable sent in August 2008 by Patterson (posted online by Wikileaks,) Patterson quoted Gilani saying: I dont care if they do it as long as they get the right people. Well protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it.
Nawaz has to learn from his past mistakes, the most damaging being appointing mediocre, pedestrian philistines to positions of power. He allowed nepotism, cronyism and favouritism to sway his judgement. For that the prime minister paid a heavy price, not once but twice.
Finance, foreign affairs, investment and energy are the critical portfolios. As happens in America, two to three names for a particular appointment are sent to the president. Meanwhile, the candidates present themselves for grilling before the media. Their private life becomes public; their finances and taxes are bared; their past statements and interviews are resurrected and censured. The ones who falter, fall through the cracks. The ones who hold their ground, sail through. In the end its the presidents prerogative to select the ideal candidate for the job.
America perfected the art of scrutiny over the centuries. Pakistan cannot become America in 67 years. Still, the task of appointing someone with brains, practical experience and a solid grounding in his/her specialised field in the 21st century, stares Sharif in the face as his greatest challenge.
The writer is a freelance journalist. Email: anjumniaz@rocketmail. com
Primer for the prime minister - Anjum Niaz
Thursday, May 16, 2013
From Print Edition
Memo from USA
If not now, when - the right man for the right job? One wrong step by Nawaz Sharif will then be downhill all the way. Names for some posts have already been leaked to the press. Bad news. They are the same old, tired faces.
Beware, megaphone, please, of professional carpetbaggers of all shades and stripes, of all strata, of all occupations, retired and serving, from bureaucrats to businessmen, from media to self-appointed experts in diplomacy, finance, public affairs, human rights, gender issues, environment and law. They will worm their way for face time with the man most in demand today.
Nawaz Sharif returns to hold the reins after a 14-year long hiatus. Londons Economist that accurately predicted Sharifs winning seats and declared him the presumptive prime minister carries a flamboyant account of a lunch that the PM-in-waiting lobbed out for the foreign press. Apart from the extravaganza seen at the Raiwind Estate, heres how the column headlined Chez Sharif opens: Pakistans bigwigs sniffing for jobs queue at his residence in Lahore. Three days ago everyone you met on the street was planning to vote for Imran Khan. Today all proudly explain how they voted for Mr Sharif.
Five years ago, it was the same scene at Bilawal House. For fear of losing some friends, let me not name the people who came each day to sit and wait for Zardari to call them in. The person taking the roll-call and deciding who should get royal audience was his sister Faryal Talpur. Diplomats, too, turned up in the hope that the kingmaker would meet them. Sherry Rehman was in charge and chose which ambassador got preference. Anne Paterson, the American ambassador, for reasons all know well, smugly sallied forth to huddle with Zardari often. The beaming duos photos were a common sight in newspapers then.
Fast forward to the present: overnight new faces have suddenly cropped up on private TV channels to sing Sharifs hosannas. Some others have left Kaptan Imran Khan by the wayside and gone across to Janab Mian Nawaz Sharif. The state owned television, renowned for debasing leaders out of power and slavishly revering those in power, has also cobbled together analysts hired to laud the great man previously a has-been. Stop this flummery.
Beware, megaphone, please, of windbags whose intellectual weightlessness is in overdrive. Whoever is appointed the information minister (personally I feel this portfolio should be eliminated) must never return to the old practice of pleasing lifafa journalists. Nor must he waste public money taking freeloaders on foreign junkets.
Nawaz Sharif batted well while talking of drones during his electioneering. Unlike Imran Khan, he didnt scream blue murder. He didnt declare shooting them down the day he becomes the PM. Nor did he pick quarrels with neighbours India and Afghanistan to score cheap shots. With his eye on the ball, his performance was tempered with caution, maturity and foresight. Whoever was his foreign affairs guru should continue in the same job, preventing anyone from swerving Mian Sahibs path of friendship with all.
Not surprisingly then, Barack Obama, Manmohan Singh and Karzai dialled their good wishes for Nawaz Sharif. Obama went the extra mile to praise his valiant campaign and expressed a wish to meet him soon.
Not so fast, warned Pakistans former envoy to the US, Husain Haqqani. Wanted by the Supreme Court in the Memogate case, he was the first to throw a spanner in Sharifs work. Haqqani rushed to address a press conference in Washington called by the New York based Council on Foreign Relations. Holding forth, he cast Pakistans future prime minister as one whose intentions to fight terror were suspect. This was a blunt warning to America and India not to trust Sharifs undertaking to fight terror. Mr Haqqani faulted Mr Sharif for the creation of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a virulently anti-India militant movement, reported the AFP.
Haqqani further cautioned saying he [Sharif] will definitely try to assert himself far more than past civilian rulers have, including him [Sharif himself] in his previous incarnation. Only the discredited Haqqani can translate this convoluted syntax.
Imran Khan, unlike Sharif, received poor advice vis-à-vis Pakistans relations with its neighbours and America, despite enjoying the wise counsel of three former foreign ministers Aseff Ahmad Ali, Khurshid Kasuri and Shah Mehmood Qureshi. Did the three party stalwarts advise him to say that Pakistan didnt need help from anyone, especially Uncle Sam; it was quite capable of generating its own resources financial, military, industrial and technological?
Seen and unseen forces, foreign or indigenous, traditionally influence the outcome of elections in Pakistan. Dont forget the NRO that opened the door for our exiled politicians to return. The State Department, British Foreign Office and the Saudis together jump-started the engines of democracy in 2007. It was not out of love or pity for Pakistanis but for continuing their war on terror. Perhaps they discovered Musharraf shortchanging them. Placing a robust counterweight like Benazir Bhutto was planned. President Bush was no longer enamoured by his tight buddy who had even tasted the delights of Camp David, the official retreat of US presidents.
We need another number to dial or words to this effect became viral when a senior Bush official went public to suggest that America should look for an alternative to Musharraf. Despite signing a secret deal with Washington permitting drone strikes (as Musharraf admitted to CNN last month) he had perhaps outlived his usefulness and had to be let go.
While Benazir was killed, her husband stepped into toe the American agenda. His prime minister Yousuf Gilani is on record telling the then US ambassador, Anne Patterson, that the Zardari government was okay with the drone attacks. In a cable sent in August 2008 by Patterson (posted online by Wikileaks,) Patterson quoted Gilani saying: I dont care if they do it as long as they get the right people. Well protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it.
Nawaz has to learn from his past mistakes, the most damaging being appointing mediocre, pedestrian philistines to positions of power. He allowed nepotism, cronyism and favouritism to sway his judgement. For that the prime minister paid a heavy price, not once but twice.
Finance, foreign affairs, investment and energy are the critical portfolios. As happens in America, two to three names for a particular appointment are sent to the president. Meanwhile, the candidates present themselves for grilling before the media. Their private life becomes public; their finances and taxes are bared; their past statements and interviews are resurrected and censured. The ones who falter, fall through the cracks. The ones who hold their ground, sail through. In the end its the presidents prerogative to select the ideal candidate for the job.
America perfected the art of scrutiny over the centuries. Pakistan cannot become America in 67 years. Still, the task of appointing someone with brains, practical experience and a solid grounding in his/her specialised field in the 21st century, stares Sharif in the face as his greatest challenge.
The writer is a freelance journalist. Email: anjumniaz@rocketmail. com
Primer for the prime minister - Anjum Niaz
