Pakistan’s attention span problem

By Ayaz Amir

Two minutes into a presentation and a shadow comes over the eyes and you can tell that the mind has begun to wander. Clever officials know this. So they steer clear of ‘boring’ issues.

Flights of fancy like signal-free corridors from here to Rewat, a train line to Murree and Muzaffarabad – this piece of brilliance is still on the cards – or another metro…bring these up and then you need not worry about the prime minister’s attention span.

Conspiracy theories and political calculations have also a tight hold on the prime ministerial mind. What is the ISI up to? What is Imran Khan’s next move? Who’s pulling his strings now? India is a big draw…and business deals of course because this is a political family in politics and huge bucks at the same time. Conflict of interest may have been a notion dimly understood in Pakistan once but not anymore.

Leaders are not technicians and they don’t have to be intellectuals or even experts. Ronald Reagan would not read anything beyond a single sheet of paper. And he would watch movies at night and go to bed early. George Bush was an early riser and would read something out of the Bible every morning. Scripture of all sorts can make for stirring reading – all that stuff about smiting the Philistines and dealing with the unrighteous. Was there a connection, yet imperfectly explored, between this and his wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?

But Reagan and Bush had their advisers who did the heavy thinking for them. Nawaz Sharif’s problem is that he wants to be his own foreign policy expert which is where he creates problems not only for himself but for the country he is supposed to be leading.

The goof-up about the meeting in Delhi between the two national security advisers is a perfect example of this. The PM seemed to have no idea of what he was putting his signature to at Ufa, the Russian city where he met Narendra Modi. Among the steps agreed to were: “a meeting in New Delhi between the two NSAs to discuss all issues connected to terrorism.” Period: nothing about the mountains or the rivers or the climate or Kashmir…all issues connected to terrorism. Does this leave anything to the imagination?

Furthermore, “Both sides agreed to discuss ways and means to expedite the Mumbai case trial, including additional information like providing voice samples.” This is the Indian take on Mumbai and our PM, his own Kissinger, agreed to this.

When the Indians said only terrorism-related issues would be discussed they were quoting Ufa, not making anything up. Good for us that they dragged in the Hurriyat – insisting, foolishly, that no one from the Pakistani side should so much as have a cup of tea with its leaders in Delhi – which gave us the pretext to get out of this mess. 

Of course we should normalise relations with India. But there is a way of going about it – creating a consensus at home and then taking the process forward…without getting unduly excited along the way. But for some reason Nawaz Sharif has this craze – and there is no other word for it – for shortcuts (and don’t forget that old line: the longest distance between two points is an unfamiliar shortcut). Then he discovers that the army has slightly different ideas. Then everyone who matters in the PML-N pulls a long face and the PM looks glum. And dark mutterings are heard that the Faujis don’t let them function.

Nawaz Sharif is third-time PM which makes him a man of experience and should give him a better understanding of how things happen in Pakistan. But to judge by some his moves on the civil-military front, and to go by the utterances of some of his key ministers who are dissatisfied with life unless they can shoot themselves in the foot every now and then, it would seem that his understanding on some issues is no better than what it was 20-25 years ago. 

To be sure, regarding their own business interests this crowd is very smart. They weren’t billionaires before entering political office but look at them now. That part of the political system they know how to work better than anyone else. But when it comes to unsexy issues, the attention deficit problem rises to the fore.

And there is no concept of delegating power and responsibility. It all remains within a tight, inner coterie. There is a turnover of faces in other climates, even China where the top leadership changes every ten years. Here we have the same faces year after year.

When the army seizes power and the commander-in-chief’s term never ends, the system gets frozen and fresh thinking is blocked. Time stood still with Gen Zia who was army chief for as long as he was commander of the faithful. It stood still with Gen Musharraf who was at the helm for a long time and wouldn’t suffer a successor to step into his shoes.

With Kayani there came some change. But when he got an extension time again stood still and fresh thinking stopped. The army sat on its haunches and couldn’t summon up the resolve or the initiative to go into North Waziristan.

Change came with the new commander, Gen Raheel Sharif. That’s when fresh ideas were taken up again and the army declared war on terrorism. In the last one year the national landscape has altered. Terrorism was in the ascendant and Pakistan on the defensive. Today it is the other way round.

The same principle or rule applies to politics. Politicians whose vision was shaped by the past were called upon to confront problems they had no clue how to handle. It wasn’t their fault if they chose the line of least resistance, making a cult of appeasement, even as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan mocked them and went on the rampage. 

Anyone who thinks that civilians are still in charge has a serious problem. It is the military handling things and giving the nation a sense of direction. Terrorism has not been eliminated but it is on the run, its force blunted. As a result, the sense of hopelessness defining Pakistan’s state of mind just the middle of last year is no more. There’s hope in the air that Pakistan’s condition is finally on the mend. Leadership has done this, but military leadership not any other kind.

It’s of a piece with this mood that the military’s standing is at an all-time high and the army chief is very popular. There’s no going around this circumstance.

This reveals a glaring disconnect between fact and fiction…or rather between military fact and constitutional fiction. The constitution vests political command in parliament. Parliament’s problem is it represents the vanished, defeated past. That is why popular acclaim and acceptance instead of being attracted by parliament has shifted decisively to the legions… to put it no more bluntly than that. This is the central fact of Pakistani politics today. 

How to bridge this disconnect? In other words, how to bring the constitution in line with prevailing realities? This is the central problem of Pakistani politics today.

The parliamentary system is dead. It is delivering nothing, not even the right sound bites. And people gradually, their eyes finally opening, are beginning to see through the metros and the flyovers…and the trains to Muzaffarabad.

Kayani was undone by his extension. An extension will be the kiss of death to Gen Raheel Sharif. So let this bogey be laid to rest. What Pakistan needs is something totally different: a directly elected president – a president elected by all the people – with executive power in his hands. Pakistan needs and deserves this fresh start, a right it has earned through the toil and sacrifices of the last one year.