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Editorial

PAKISTAN’S T20 series loss to New Zealand has not come as a surprise. The
tour was always seen as a challenging one for Pakistan and the two contests
(one is yet to be played) were the result of bad governance by both the bigwigs
running the show at the PCB and the team management. Frequent changes in
captaincy, poor selection, placid pitches at home, needless shuffles in the
batting order, short-sighted decisions and lack of strategic planning have hurt
Pakistan cricket, particularly during the last three years. Trying out a fresh
opening pair in Mohammad Rizwan and Abdullah Shafique for a tough series
made little sense to begin with. Rizwan has never been an opener, while young
Abdullah, in his debut first class season with just half a dozen games to his
name, was brutally exposed by the host pacers. Missing in action was the most
experienced team management comprising Misbah-ul-Haq, Younis Khan, Waqar
Younis and others. Not only did they fail to guide new skipper Shadab Khan,
who clearly misread the pitches in both games to bat first, no damage-control
measures were in place during Pakistan’s reckless batting and clueless
bowling.

As the Black Caps motored along with little fuss towards a comprehensive
victory, it became evident that the Green Shirts were increasingly susceptible
when out of their comfort zone, ie home conditions. It was in September last
year that the PCB removed skipper Sarfraz Ahmed on the pretext of his failing
to motivate the team. They replaced him with Azhar Ali in Tests and Babar
Azam in the ODIs and the T20s. Now Azhar, too, stands removed, while Babar
has injured himself. Pakistan have slipped to fourth position in the T20s after a
long reign at the top. They are ranked a poor sixth in the ODIs and seventh in
Tests. The PCB and the team management urgently need to get their act
together and show wisdom and far-sightedness in their decisions to bring
Pakistan back among the top.

Published in Dawn, December 22nd, 2020

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Insufficient gas

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‫ﮐﻮروﻧﺎ واﺋﺮس ﮐﯽ ﻧﺌﯽ ﻗﺴﻢ ﮐﮯ ﺣﻮاﻟﮯ ﺳﮯ ﻣﺎﮨﺮﯾﻦ ﮐﺎ اﻧﺘﺒﺎہ‬

‫ﮐﯿﺎ آپ ﺟﺎﻧﺘﮯ ﮨﯿﮟ ﮐﮧ ﻣﺮﻏﯽ اور اﻧﮉے ﮐﯽ ﻗﯿﻤﺘﻮں ﻣﯿﮟ اﺗﻨﺎ اﺿﺎﻓﮧ‬
‫ﮐﯿﻮں ﮨﻮا؟‬

‫وہ ﺑﮩﺘﺮﯾﻦ ﻓﻠﻢ ﺟﻮ آپ ﮐﻮ ﺑﺎر ﺑﺎر دﯾﮑﮭﻨﮯ ﭘﺮ ﻣﺠﺒﻮر ﮐﺮدے ﮔﯽ‬

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22 Dec 2020 Editorial

UAE visa issue

UAE visa issue
Editorial

IN the field of international relations, sometimes differences between

traditional allies do crop up, and it requires deft diplomacy to resolve these
issues before they start to have a damaging effect on relations. Concerning the
suspension of UAE visas for Pakistanis — as well as around a dozen other
mostly Muslim-majority states — that took effect last month, the Emirati
government has assured Pakistan that the curbs are “temporary”. The foreign
minister was recently in the UAE and took up the issue with Emirati officials,
and the Foreign Office spokesman said on Sunday that Abu Dhabi had assured
Islamabad that the restrictions were put in place due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Moreover, the UAE foreign minister issued a warmly worded statement hailing
ties between his country and Pakistan. These are of course welcome
developments, as after news of the ban emerged there were rumours
circulating over the nature of the visa suspension. For example, it was being
conjectured that the changing geopolitical situation could have been behind
Abu Dhabi’s decision. Specifically, the UAE’s acceptance of Israel came as a
bombshell in September, while rumours were circling that many foreign friends
of Pakistan were also pressuring this country to recognise Tel Aviv. However, if
the ban is indeed about Covid-19 — doubts still remain — then the UAE must
communicate to Pakistan the steps it needs to take to resolve the issue and
ensure that Pakistanis can travel to the Emirates without hindrance.

But questions will linger on about why Pakistan and the other states were
singled out for the visa ban. After all, this country, with some 459,000 confirmed
coronavirus cases, is by no means more of a threat to the UAE’s health system
than India, which has just crossed the grim milestone of over 10m Covid-19
cases, or the US, which tops the global total with nearly 18m cases. Neither of
these countries was in the list of countries whose nationals were barred from
being issued new UAE visas. Indeed, the matter is a serious one for Pakistan, as
nearly 1.5m citizens of this country live and work in the sheikhdom. While such
economic and political ties are important for Pakistan, it is also true that
foreign policy decisions must be made on the basis of national interest. The
state needs to explain to its foreign allies that while it values ties with them,
Pakistan will not be pressured into taking decisions.

Published in Dawn, December 22nd, 2020

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‫ﮐﻮروﻧﺎ واﺋﺮس ﮐﯽ ﻧﺌﯽ ﻗﺴﻢ ﮐﮯ ﺣﻮاﻟﮯ ﺳﮯ ﻣﺎﮨﺮﯾﻦ ﮐﺎ اﻧﺘﺒﺎہ‬

‫ﮐﯿﺎ آپ ﺟﺎﻧﺘﮯ ﮨﯿﮟ ﮐﮧ ﻣﺮﻏﯽ اور اﻧﮉے ﮐﯽ ﻗﯿﻤﺘﻮں ﻣﯿﮟ اﺗﻨﺎ اﺿﺎﻓﮧ‬
‫ﮐﯿﻮں ﮨﻮا؟‬

‫وہ ﺑﮩﺘﺮﯾﻦ ﻓﻠﻢ ﺟﻮ آپ ﮐﻮ ﺑﺎر ﺑﺎر دﯾﮑﮭﻨﮯ ﭘﺮ ﻣﺠﺒﻮر ﮐﺮدے ﮔﯽ‬

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Multimedia Editorial

Insufficient gas
SEVERAL gas consumers are facing shortages and a drop in pressure in Punjab
and KP in spite of major cuts in supply to the power and transport sectors as
well as captive plants in the industry. The factors behind the current gas
shortages are said to be an increased demand for gas for heating and cooking
at home as temperatures fall, delay in the arrival of an LNG vessel, and higher
gas retentions allowed to SSGCL for power generation by K-Electric. The line-
pack of the SNGPL network, which feeds gas customers in the two provinces, is
reported to be hovering between 4,100mmcfd and 4,300mmcfd because of
reduced supply from the SSGCL system, which provides the fuel to consumers
in Sindh and Balochistan. Approximately 4,300mmcfd is the minimum
benchmark for safety reasons to maintain adequate gas pressure in the SNGPL
pipeline system. Similarly, LNG supplies for the SNGPL network have further
dropped to about 850mmcfd from 1,050mmcfd against the promised
1,200mmcfd owing to the diversion of around 160mmcfd to the SSGCL
network. Overall, SNGPL is facing a shortfall of 350-400mmcfd as its supplies
from both domestic system gas and LNG are reduced to about 1,700-
1,750mmcfd against 2,100mmcfd of usual supplies these days, which explains
the rising complaints of low pressure from tail-end consumers.

The present gas shortages have come despite the impression given by SAPM
petroleum Nadeem Babar a few weeks back that the country would not face a
major gas shortage this winter. Mr Babar claimed the government had made an
all-out effort to maximise supplies in the gas network through increased RLNG
imports. Nevertheless, he warned that consumers at the tail-end of the pipeline
network could experience low pressure, which perhaps was a hint at impending
shortages. Later developments, such as the government’s failure to procure
LNG cargos for the first fortnight of the next month and higher prices of
imports, spawned fears of a harsher January and gas rationing by distribution
companies, besides underscoring the incompetence of the authorities
responsible for the timely import of LNG to fill the supply gap. That those fears
have proved correct underscore the lack of proper planning to avert the
shortages that have become a part of winter life in the country for over a
decade. With the domestic gas resource depleted largely and the supply gaps
enlarging, many rightly wonder about the basis on which the claim of having
balanced supply and demand, especially when the country has only limited
LNG-import capacity, was made.

Gas accounts for more than half of Pakistan’s total energy consumption as it is
used for a variety of purposes from cooking to manufacturing fertilisers to
fuelling cars to producing electricity. Unless the government takes measures to
enhance LNG’s import capacity through the private sector or we stumble upon a
significantly large domestic resource, the coming winters will be harsher than
ever.

Published in Dawn, December 22nd, 2020

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Multimedia Muhammad Ali Siddiqi

OIC’s approach
NOTWITHSANDING the positive outcome of the two-day conference of Islamic
foreign ministers in Niger’s capital last month, Pakistan need not be euphoric
nor forget some of the fundamental differences between our pan-Islamic
sentiments and those of the other members of the Organisation of Islamic
Cooperation which are a little less zealous about it. At the same time, let us not
confuse the ummah with the OIC. The two are not synonyms.

The ummah comprises world Muslims linked through an unshakable bond of

belief and emotions peculiar to Muslims; the OIC consists mostly of unelected
governments of 50-plus member states which may or may not share common
interests because of differences in geography, ethnography and historical
experience. Even the 22 members of the Arab League do not have a common
perception of geopolitical issues and are sometimes at loggerheads, as can be
seen in their policies on the slaughter in Syria, Yemen and Libya.

One point should, however, be grasped at the outset. The Arab world is the pivot
on which the ummah turns. Without the Arabs and their language there is no
ummah. This is a harsh geopolitical and historical reality, and if one finds Arab
governments indifferent to non-Arab issues — even tragedies like Kashmir and
Rohingya — then one can only pray.

There is another bitter observation: the average Arab cannot understand how
people — eg those millions of Indonesians, South Asians, Kazakhs or Bosnians
— can be Muslim if they do not speak the language of the Holy Quran.

What is this lame-duck organisation good for?

The Arabs are a proud people. Their belief in the superiority of their language
and their consciousness of Arabs’ cultural achievements in history shape their
lackadaisical attitude towards all non-Arab Muslims. Toward Turks and Iranians
— the only two ethnic groups they have interacted with for more than a
millennium — their approach is more complex. ‘Turks’ here doesn’t mean
Ottomans alone; it also means the variety of Turco-Mongols who ruled the
Middle East for nearly 1,000 years —- the Seljuks, Mamluks, Il-Khans, White
Sheep and Black Sheep, Circassians, Timurids and Turco-Albanians. One reason
for Arab indifference to the Turkic people is their bitter memory of the way the
Timurids and some Mamluks dealt with them.

In the case of Iran, they draw satisfaction from the fact that it was the Arabs
who ruled Iran and changed its culture. However, the fact that Shia Islam
became Iran’s state religion from the early 16th century onwards has made no
difference to Shia Arabs. Note that Iraq is a Shia-majority country and Saddam
Hussein’s army which attacked Iran was largely Shia.

Getting down to brass tacks, it was the UAE which gave two blows to Pakistan
last year. In March, it hosted at Abu Dhabi the 46th OIC foreign ministers’
conference, which the late Indian foreign minister, Sushma Swaraj, attended as
an honoured guest. Later that year, it could have come up with a stronger
denunciation of the Indian move to abolish India-held Kashmir’s special status
and amendment to the nationality law. The entire Arab world was indifferent.

Must we be so OIC-oriented? What is this lame-duck organisation good for? It

doesn’t even have non-political achievements to its credit. No country in the
world attaches so much importance to it as Pakistan does for reasons which
are visceral and not grounded in geopolitical realities. India, too, watches the
OIC carefully and derives sadistic pleasure from Pakistan’s discomfiture. (India
enjoys observer status at the Arab League.)

Let Pakistan shirk any attempt at creating a non-Arab bloc. In the first place this
will only widen the gulf between Arab and non-Arab governments without
advancing any cause. Secondly, the fate of the abortive non-Arab mini summit
at Kuala Lumpur last December is before us. Whether or not the Saudis
threatened Pakistan, the way Recep Tayyip Erdogan is reported to have put it is
immaterial. Arabs are too powerful to be ignored, centrally placed
geographically and endowed historically with leadership heritage. The realistic
course for Pakistan is to ignore the OIC and treat it as a debating forum.

The Arabs are basically a secular people. A native of Damascus or Cairo is first
Arab overtures on a religious basis. In fact, he is suspicious as to the motive.
Islam is in his blood, and unlike us Pakistanis he doesn’t flaunt it.

Let’s accept it. Our ‘we Muslims’ obsession, which is a continuation of our pre-
Partition anguish about Muslims in other countries, has largely remained
unreciprocated. If we want respect from the OIC and the world, let Pakistanis
first give some respect to each other. Let Pakistanis hate each other a little
less. Let us develop the ‘Pakistan comes first’ narrative, eclipsed unfortunately
by elements that have terrorised Pakistan into becoming a base for an
international jihadist movement.

The writer is Dawn’s external ombudsman and an author.

Published in Dawn, December 22nd, 2020

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Multimedia Anjum Altaf

Equal education
THE 2020 Global Teacher Prize, sponsored by the Varkey Foundation and
Unesco, and worth a million dollars, has been awarded to Ranjitsinh Disale, a
primary school teacher in a village in Maharashtra where he teaches girls from
tribal communities. There were more than 12,000 contenders from over 140
countries.

Two things stand out about the winner. First, Ranjitsinh learnt the local
language to translate class textbooks into his pupils’ mother tongue. Just this
confirms that he is wiser than all our ministers of education and policymakers
put together which makes him deserving of the highest recognition.

Second, Ranjitsinh belongs to the rare category of those who think beyond
themselves. There were 10 teachers on the shortlist from which he was
declared the winner. Ranjitsinh gave away half the million-dollar prize to the
other nine on the list because “Their incredible work is still worthy... If I share
the prize money with the rest of the teachers they will get a chance to continue
their work... and we can reach out and lighten the lives of as many students as
we can.”

One cannot admire Ranjitsinh enough for his wisdom as a teacher and vision as
a reformer, and he has been lauded the world over. The Dalai Lama appreciated
his sharing the prize and remarked that “Educating young children, especially
from poor and needy backgrounds is perhaps the best way to help them as
individuals, and actively contributes to creating a better world.”

One cannot admire Ranjitsinh enough for his wisdom

and vision.

Much as I appreciate individuals like Ranjitsinh, it is the unquestioned scaling

up of their initiatives to the presumed creation of a better world that leaves me
unconvinced. I wonder why the Dalai Lama, and others with his credibility, do
not use the occasion to question a world in which millions of poor and needy
children are dependent for their education on charity. What would have been the
fate of the village children if Ranjitsinh had chosen some other career? And how
many Ranjitsinhs would we need to create a better world by educating all the
children from poor and needy backgrounds? As Maulana Rumi said centuries
ago: “If you pour the sea into a jug, how much will it contain? Just one day’s
portion.”

Should we accept a world in which the majority of children are beggars, seeking
someone to help them, instead of choosers who can claim education as a
right? Something is amiss if the way to making the world better is charity and
not entitlement. Something is wrong if the better world is dependent on heroes
like Ranjitsinh to repair the inequity for which their collective efforts can never
suffice. The only real question is whether we are deceiving ourselves knowingly
or unknowingly.

We know a right to education exists in the Constitution which says, “The State
shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of five to
sixteen years in such manner as may be determined by law” and that “The State
shall remove illiteracy and provide free and compulsory primary and secondary
education within minimum possible period.”

We are also aware of the huge gap between promise and provision with 44 per
cent of school-age children out of school. But the real issue goes beyond that:
what is the quality of education being received by the majority of children in
school? And should there be variation in the quality of education received by
different children in the same country?

The focus on access needs to be moderated by a greater emphasis on quality.

As things exist, one is not sure who is more fortunate — those who are out of
school or those who are in it yet subjected to poor and misguided teaching.

Even when access is provided, the issues of quality of education and

discrimination in access to quality will not go away. We would be forced to ask
if every child is entitled to the same quality of basic education or whether that
should be a function of parental wealth.
Should education be a marketable commodity in which some can buy a much
better service while others can buy nothing at all and are dependent on charity,
if they are lucky? Who will argue that this is how the world ought to be?

It should be obvious that an initiative like the Single National Curriculum cannot
yield parity in access to quality education, much more a function of the ability
of teachers which is allocated in the market by what a school can pay as salary,
which itself is a function of what it charges as fees.

We will never arrive at a better world unless we address this question. Our
genuine celebration at the award to Ranjitsinh should be tempered with genuine
concern at the kind of world we have created that needs heroes like him.

The writer is the former dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at
Lums.

Published in Dawn, December 22nd, 2020

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Multimedia Jawed Naqvi

Different idioms, similar stories

IRFAN Husain had made it a habit to forward me the occasional email in which
his Indian fans would snitch about the poor calibre of my columns from New
Delhi, particularly when compared to his. Why couldn’t I write as honestly as he
did, they asked Irfan, who they admired for his unsparing criticism of everything
that was wrong with Pakistan.

He tried to reason that I was an Indian journalist trying to describe the events in
India equally critically to a newspaper on the other side of the border. And Irfan
as a peripatetic Pakistani journalist was bound to slam the mess Pakistan’s
military and civilian leaders had made of their country.

Irfan soon realised that reasoning with nationalists of any hue was like banging
one’s head against the wall, more so if they happened to be Indian enthusiasts
who loved hearing criticism of Pakistan but not of India. It is difficult to imagine
a good journalist, he would say, who is also a staunch nationalist.

And that has been the best part of writing for a Pakistani paper from New Delhi.

Pakistani journalists have a formidable lineage with a global worldview, which

started with Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Mazhar Ali Khan and continues undaunted.
There’s no dearth of editors and scribes and even owners of newspapers jailed
for speaking up for democracy, a kind of zeal less witnessed in India during the
emergency and sadly for the most part today.

Irfan Husain evolved a different set of skills and

tactics to beat the system.

Irfan Husain evolved a different skill and tactics to beat the system. He wrote
under more than one pseudonym, the most familiar being Mazdak, a name he
adopted while still working as civil servant. His choice of the pseudonym
should tell us something about Irfan’s inspirations, Mazdak being a Persian
rebel who nudged the ruler of the day to abandon his powerful nobles to set up
an early communist order. The ruler was overthrown and Mazdak executed,
according to one version of history.

The heroic story has been subjected to scholarly scrutiny and it is disputed by
some that such a character did exist in fifth-century Persia. It does tell us
something about Irfan, though, who perhaps as a bureaucrat of his times
sought to usher ideologically imbued progressive changes on Pakistan’s hostile
turf. Taking to writing was a handy tool in this endeavour.

In my two decades of writing for Dawn, I rarely missed reading Irfan’s insightful
columns. They were acerbic, analytical, secular, liberal, humorous, entertaining,
agitating, but invariably thought-provoking. That was not all. He also provoked
me to look up his steady references and scholarly allusions from history. Irfan’s
quarrel with the Muslim clergy in Pakistan as elsewhere was uncompromising,
and this is indicated quite analytically in his book Fatal Faultlines: Pakistan,
Islam and the West. He was sanguine that the damage could be limited from
religious assault on democracy and even perhaps reversed had the US not
persisted with making everything worse.

What well-meaning analyst would not agree totally with Irfan’s explanation for
many of our troubles with Muslim extremism today?

It was eye-catching that Irfan used a metaphor from his Western cultural
experience — being married to the erudite and warm-hearted Charlotte Breese
being a key element — to describe a situation, which slightly varied from the
one I would have used to narrate a similar story from my Indian grounding.
There’s an evil character called Raktabeej, literally meaning seeds of blood, who
is slain by goddess Durga. But Raktabeej had a boon. Wherever the drops of his
blood fell, there would crop up another Raktabeej. Durga/Kali thus set about
licking the blood clean before it fell to the ground, getting her famous red
tongue in the bargain. Irfan’s story about American intervention uses the
metaphor of dragon’s teeth that its military had sown in the troubled world.

“In the ancient Greek myth about Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece, the hero
was given a bag of dragon’s teeth and told to plant them in a field. As soon as
he did so, an armed warrior sprang up at each spot where a tooth had been
America has seemed a bit like Jason. Every time it cuts down an enemy, more
spring up to attack it,” he said in the book.

Fair journalism requires a reasonable degree of objectivity and objectivity in

turn requires a relative absence of parochial zeal to produce a credible
narrative. Imagine if instead of having Irfan Husain or Saleem Asmi as
colleagues, I had a Pakistani clone of India’s Arnab Goswami, with his foaming-
at-the-mouth jingoism to work with. It would not happen, period. It has thus
been a joy to work with Irfan and other Dawn colleagues who harboured
goodwill for India. A depleting gaggle of Indian journalists has similar feelings
for Pakistan, and they are there. Irfan gave me courage and an example to write
without fear or favour from across a periodically tense border.

The approximate obverse of nationalist zeal in journalism is a steady flow of

self-criticism. When Noam Chomsky slams Israel’s excesses against the
Palestinians he can’t be accused of anti-Semitism. When Irfan Husain turned
his attention from describing the rot in Pakistan to the violation of Kashmir’s
freedoms by Indian forces, it was difficult to dismiss him as a zealous
Pakistani. It is not only important to note what is being said, but who is saying
it.

Firaq Gorakhpuri treated Harivansh Rai Bachchan’s popular poem Madhushala

(tavern) with a sceptical frown. Firaq believed that Omar Khayyam’s celebration
of the forbidden elixir made as much sense as Ghalib and Faiz paying fulsome
tributes to the goblet for similar reasons. In Bachchan’s culture, drinking wine
was far from taboo. Irfan Husain’s progressive pursuits were to me like
Khayyam’s resistance against a stifling order, occasionally couched in poetic
imagery.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, December 22nd, 2020

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Multimedia Arifa Noor

Too grand a dialogue

FOR the world, the coronavirus vaccine is the solution for 2021 but, in Pakistan,
the panacea we are looking for is a grand national dialogue. It’s the flavour of
the month, not just in politics but also for those who like talking about it.
Indeed, the webinars, which have taken over our Covid-bound lives, have found
a topic more important than the economy or the new world order, post-Covid,
which until recently were all the rage.

As it is a topic more easily comprehensible than the economy, I too found

myself listening to one such seminar, held by Pildat, for its star cast. Surely
getting retired Gen Ehsan and Fawad Hassan Fawad is a casting coup for the
seminar world. Adding even more heft was Mushahid Hussain Syed, a serving
senator of the PML-N.

Interestingly, all three — a retired bureaucrat and general, and a working

politician — agreed to the need for such a dialogue and that it needed to adhere
to the Constitution. For example, Mushahid Hussain Syed said that any
dialogue could not be supra-constitutional while Fawad Hassan said that
course correction would come from the Constitution. But there ended the
commonalities, illustrating the vagueness of the term and idea.

No one is clear about what it will focus on or what it aims to achieve. The
politician suggested free and fair elections as one possible objective or the
transformation of Pakistan into a welfare state, while the former military man
argued that the aim would determine the participants and how to proceed.

No one is clear about what it will focus on or what it

aims to achieve.

More telling was the fact that for the retired general, this dialogue could take
place in an NSC of sorts while for the senator only parliament could be the
forum where such an initiative could begin. But it was Fawad Hassan Fawad
who made the most perceptive remarks, as he focused less on the shape of
this dialogue and more on how we got to the point where the state has become
so dysfunctional that a dialogue is needed (his comments about the Mustafa
Impex case and the 1975 presidential order should be mandatory listening even
when this dialogue saga is over). In doing so, he didn’t simply moan about the
imbalance in the civil-military relationship, which has become like Camilla
Parker-Bowles the only villain of Diana’s fairytale, but offered a more nuanced
picture. As he correctly pointed out, those showing an interest in dialogue are
the ones on the receiving end and not those in power.

In the story he told, the judiciary also had some questions to answer — about its
judgements but also its perceived aversion to its own accountability, eg by
refusing to let its accounts be audited.

But equally importantly, he told a story of a parliament that deserves to be

heard more often than it is; according to him, the relationship of the executive
with the legislature is one which is more dysfunctional than the one with the
military — perhaps this is what we should be focusing on rather than civil-
military. The government didn’t take the legislature along and neither did the
latter play the role it was supposed to, he argued.

The debate highlighted a few important points, the foremost being our
obsession with finding political solutions through legal means. This why we
continue to take political issues to the court and also why judges continue to
give judgements on political matters. The military may have used this avenue to
its advantage but politicians and to some extent even civil society have added
to this trend.

These days, when it is argued that a political dialogue is needed under the
constitutional framework, the same mistake is being made and a naïve solution
being offered. Those asking for it are not really interested in the principles but
the fact that the Constitution allows them a primacy which is denied to them in
politics. To assume the other side will promise to adhere to the Constitution
and we will all live happily ever after is a fairytale.

After all, if the great democrats within political parties cannot even give
parliament — from where they, theoretically, draw their strength and legitimacy
to do so? The references to the Constitution are political expediency, and little
else. This does not mean that the law and Constitution are irrelevant; just that
the parameters of dialogue need far more definition and detail than simply
saying that we need to talk to ensure the Constitution is adhered to. After all,
every act by the three pillars of state and others should follow the Constitution,
not just a one-time ‘grand dialogue’.

Second, it is also important to note, as did Fawad Hassan Fawad, those calling
for this dialogue. He says it is those who are out of favour — but even here there
is a caveat. Those calling for a dialogue are the second tier of politicians.
Shortly after the PPP term ended, Farhatullah Babar and Raza Rabbani asked
for one and now it is Shahid Khaqan or Khawaja Asif or Fawad Chaudhry. Party
heads such as Asif Ali Zardari, Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan couldn’t care less;
they are only interested in an election victory (which is what they politely call a
fair election) so they can ride roughshod over parliament, perhaps because it is
the legislature that is at the receiving end and the constituency politicians
within it. Those calling the shots in the parties are as disinterested as perhaps
the Pindi wallahs.

This is why it may help to discard grand notions of a grand dialogue and focus
on smaller, clearer goals, which may lead to the loftier objective of stronger
institutions. Electoral reforms could be one, as could reforming the bureaucracy
or addressing some pressing economic issues. Here, it may be relatively easier
to get the buy-in missing in the idea of a grand dialogue. For any such dialogue
has to offer a result in the interest of the participants; and an adherence to the
Constitution suits few of the ‘giants’ calling the shots in our political arena.

The writer is a journalist.

Published in Dawn, December 22nd, 2020

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