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EDITORIAL: Negative expectations from ‘Z-N’ meeting

The general impression in the media about Monday’s meeting between President Asif Ali Zardari and the PMLN leader Mr Nawaz Sharif was that it broke no new ground. One TV channel was so upset that it called the meeting a “zero”. It is true that nothing radically different was visible — after the meeting — in the past tenor of the PPP-PMLN relationship. It would be interesting to find out what the media wanted the meeting to achieve.

Some anchors could not hide the fact that they had nursed negative expectations from it. They wanted Mr Sharif to challenge Mr Zardari and put conditions before him that would end the latter’s alleged dominance in the country’s governance and possibly get from him a credible pledge about sacking a number of ministers. The anti-PPP media did not spell out what it wanted from the meeting of the two party bosses, but they kept talking about the “unconstitutionality” of the NRO, corruption in the government and a sell-out of national honour to the US while accepting the Kerry-Lugar law.

For them the meeting was a damp squib. They, and the “guests” they brought to the talk-shows, kept “advising” Mr Sharif to stand firm and say no to Mr Zardari on all the three above-mentioned “national issues”. The more passionate of the critics relied on the “suffering of the people” at the hands of a government that could not resolve the power crisis, failed to carry out the Supreme Court orders to provide cheap sugar to the common man, and was impervious to people committing suicide. They wanted Mr Sharif not to cooperate with Mr Zardari but to deliver a Darwinist coup de grace to a government they thought was too weak to last.

The meeting delivered nothing of this. What it did deliver clearly was an assertion by the PMLN that it will not participate in the collapse of the political order created by the 2008 elections. It did not discuss the NRO which is sub judice and in the cognisance of the parliament. Mr Sharif did not ask Mr Zardari to get rid of the governor in Punjab or to say no the grant-in-aid coming in from the US, because of which, together with the IMF assistance, Pakistan’s economy still enjoys a measure of international trust. There was however a discussion of the removal of the 17th Amendment disabilities through the 18th Amendment which the parliament is already seized of.

All kinds of “conspiracy” theories flew around. Politicians who specialise in reading the tea-leaves of Pakistan’s meta-history said that both the big parties had once again decided to take dictation from America and line up together to welcome the US Secretary of State Ms Hilary Clinton whose forthcoming visit will hand over the next bit of the American agenda in Pakistan. The absence from the meeting of Mr Shehbaz Sharif and Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan was interpreted in the same context: they were punished through a blackball for having gone and met the army chief who was opposed to American aid.

The biggest item that has infused the paranoid aspects of the Pakistani state and has surfaced once again — the expected American attack on Pakistan’s nuclear facilities — was also not discussed. After all the hype created by the media and those who influence it, Mr Sharif thought it was not necessary for him to put Mr Zardari on notice on the subject. The Americans are supposed to be beefing up their diplomatic facilities with mercenary soldiers to make a dash for Kahuta to steal the bomb.

What Mr Zardari has achieved by inviting Mr Sharif to Islamabad is a reiteration from the latter of his resolve not to topple the government before its term. What Mr Sharif has achieved is no major shift from the political stance that has made him the most popular politician in the country. Those who think that he should do what most ordinary politicians do after becoming popular — rock the democratic boat and unleash all sorts of undemocratic forces — have been disappointed. *

SECOND EDITORIAL: Tread carefully in the region

Pakistan has wisely not made much of the 10 Iranian Revolutionary Guards after they were caught 10 km inside Pakistani territory on Monday, apparently seeking to arrest Jundallah terrorists. It has returned the men to Iran. Islamabad could easily have created tensions with Tehran by “keeping them for questioning”. This is realism. Because Pakistan’s borders are porous and terrorists have the freedom of passage across them, Pakistan doesn’t look nice accusing its neighbours.

It would have been easy to link Iran to India and give birth to another conspiracy theory. A germ of it is present in the Balochistan chief minister’s hint that the assassination of his Punjabi education minister — already owned by the Balochistan Liberation United Front (BLUF) — could have been planned across the border in Afghanistan. The question is what conclusive empirical evidence is there that killings cannot be planned inside Pakistan? The unspoken rule is: connect India and roll the dice.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik seemed to have abandoned his usual affability while dealing with India’s constant complaining about terrorism from Pakistan by saying Monday that he had proof of India funding the Taliban to destroy Pakistan. He asserted: “If the Indian interior minister or anyone else wants to confront me on this, I will be very happy to accommodate them because I know that what I am saying is correct”. The difficulty is that it is not the people of Pakistan who are to judge this strange “match” between Mr Malik and his Indian counterpart, but the world community.

If Pakistan is holding down the lid on its “discovery” of an Indian hand in Balochistan, it can also keep the nugget about the Indian aid to Taliban under the bushel. (There are many logical dots that can’t be joined.) More important is the Indo-Pak dialogue and through it a normalisation of the bilateral equation. Challenging India with counter-accusations may please some elements in Pakistan but it will do nothing to increase Pakistan’s ability to escape its internal chaos. The line Mr Malik has taken with Iran is more effective. That is the line he should keep taking with India. *

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