What, in heaven’s name, is the PPP up to? Why is the serene leaderene mute while her gadfly mother and a host of smaller fries are shooting their mouths off?
While abroad, it appears Ms Bhutto went the extra mile to appease the Americans, and failed dismally. Congressman Robert Lagamarsino of the Asia Sub-committee showed her a log list of vitriolic statements made by senior members of her party. Did she approve, he curtly asked? Bhutto tried to absolve herself by weakly admitting “she didn’t understand it herself” because the remarks had been made after she left Pakistan. What about her criticism of the Nawaz Sharif government for its willingness to accept safeguards on a small nuclear reactor provided by China to Pakistan, asked Mr John Kelly, Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs? How did she square these views with her pledge before a joint session of Congress in 1989 that Pakistan neither possessed nor had any intention of acquiring a nuclear capability, the State Department’s Margaret Tutwiler insisted on knowing? Bhutto’s sorry explanation suggested that her criticism was not so much against safeguards as against those in Pakistan who castigated her in the past for contemplating safeguards but were now agreeable to opening up Pakistan’s nuclear facilities to international inspection.
When Bhutto pitched her concern about Kashmir on Capital Hill, she was reportedly brushed aside: the US supports the 1972 Simla accords, and that’s it. When she implored Congress to at least approve the economic components of the aid package so that US-Pakistan relations wouldn’t be irreparably damaged, Ms Tutwiler responded firmly: “As far as I know, no new assurances about Pakistan’s nuclear programme have been given and the status quo remains.”
While Ms Bhutto was being coolly rebuffed in Washington, her militant jeealas in Islamabad were giving party loyalist Mr Shafqat Mahmood a hard time. “No, how can you discuss the Gulf crisis with her on the phone”, the besieged fellow implored the mob. Fearful of their testy mood, he suggested Mrs Nusrat Bhutto might be amenable to an earful.
Enter, thus, the mother into the daughter’s class slippers. Thus, too, the first CEC meeting in Karachi under Mrs Bhutto which unanimously blasted the Americans and roundly ticked off Mian Nawaz Sharif’s pro-Allied Gulf policy. As for the dejected leaderene, she has limped back home and retreated into a deafening silence.
Meanwhile, Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan, who is madly in love with his own loud voice, has exploded inside the Assembly t regale all and sundry about the immorality of the Americans and how this “defining moment in history” is pregnant with possibilities. Mr Salmaan Taseer, the articulate loner in the Punjab, too has gone to town, reserving his choicest invective for the man he most loves to hate, Mian Nawaz Sharif.
We must presume Benazir Bhutto has acquiesced in this particular attack on Mian Sahib and the Americans. Ms Bhutto’s silence and her mother’s new credibility also suggest that, perhaps, she is keeping her council for a more opportune moment when the PPP may consider changing track in order to exploit the rapidly changing scenario at home and abroad.
All this is quite fishy. Why, for instance, does Mr Taseer now think “there is no harm if the COAs speaks his mind in public”, when all his adult life was spent cursing those ‘interfering men in khaki’? Why does Mr Ahsan suddenly feel the need to compliment the COAS for articulating his strategic visions when not so long ago he was advising the same gentleman to take a copy of the Pakistan Constitution home and catch up on his bed-time reading?
In Islamabad, there is growing talk of the desirability of a “national government” with a National Security Council to accommodate the military. We hear of Messrs Jatoi, Junejo and Khar tearing around in search of launching pads for their soaring ambitions. Malik Meraj Khalid, we are told, is about to return to Parliament after the disqualification of the candidate who defeated him last October. Mr Altaf Hussain is biding his time in hospital, a sure sign that something is afoot. Are disgruntled politicians up to their nasty tricks again, trying to sweep the carpet from one another’s hated feet, regardless of whether it is the ubiquitous military which may eventually trounce everyone all over again? Because the PPP leaders claim to be responsible democrats, we have a right to expect greater restraint from them in such a charged atmosphere.
A meeting between Mian Nawaz Sharif and Ms Benazir Bhutto may be on the cards. They represent the only two organic forces in this country. As we have advised repeatedly, these two should kiss and make up. Otherwise, they may both rue the day they allowed their personal contradictions to knock each other out and paved the way for Bonapartists waiting to pitch their tents on a terrain that doesn’t belong to them.