What the president needs to do
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Zafar Hilaly
We know that politics is not Mr Zardari's preferred vocation; he is an entrepreneur who was compelled to enter politics following the tragic assassination of his wife. We also know that he has no great aptitude for politics. That too is obvious, often uncomfortably so. But, nor was politics Benazir Bhutto's first choice. She wanted to be a diplomat. However, when she discovered that fate and circumstances left her with no alternative she set about learning, nay, mastering, the profession. Similarly the last thing Mr Nawaz Sharif was cut out for was politics. And though he proved a slow learner few now doubt that he has come of age in his profession. To be fair to Mr Zardari his learning process has perforce been somewhat rushed though he did have the incomparable advantage of studying with the help of a great teacher, his late wife.
Perhaps the foremost requirement of any politician is to capture by word and gesture the mood of the people and then to shape it to his advantage. Hence how a politician speaks, as much as what he says, is important and this is the reason why Benazir Bhutto used to insist on being left alone whenever she needed to work on a speech for an important occasion. In fact my last recollection of her was stooped, pencil in hand immersed in revising the speech that she was to deliver an hour or so later at the Liaquat Bagh rally.
Sadly, Mr Zardari does not seem to feel the need to rehearse or prepare a speech before he steps up to the podium. Either because he feels he need not or simply can't be bothered. The first occasion when his lack of preparation became obvious was when he spoke to the Joint Session of Parliament in 2008. A "never again moment" was thus lost. The next when he addressed the UN General Assembly in the same year. A well crafted and well delivered speech on that occasion would have defined him, our priorities and the nation as a whole under his stewardship to the world at large. This too did not happen and thereafter his audience shrank considerably.
Nobody quite knows why Mr Zardari chose to appear on national television at 1 a.m. in the morning last week to curse the Taliban, praise the Jawans fighting them and announce that the Army planned to stay in Swat. Almost as puzzling as the reason and timing of the speech was its brevity. It was only slightly longer than the musical intro, in other words, the time it takes to play the national anthem twice. To compound the confusion and what, in retrospect, was more telling was the strange lack of public interest. "Who cares? Anyway, no one takes him seriously," was how one analyst attending a think tank session remarked.
Mr Zardari is in deep political trouble if these remarks accurately reflect public perception. Hardly has he gained any traction than he is being written off. A politician can overcome just about every charge hurled against him but never being ignored.
But not all the news is bad because judging by the spate of press releases emanating from the office of the presidential spokesman, the efficient, erudite and loyal Farhatullah Babar, Mr Zardari seems to have found a vocation other than travelling; and that is ministering to the IDPs. This is a welcome development. Having failed to protect them in their homes the least the state can do is to tend to their misery as refugees; or else we will deservedly have no claim on their loyalties.
To his credit Mr Zardari is trying to do just that. However, he must do more than hold meetings and issue orders. He must ensure that they are implemented and one way of doing so is to visit the camps frequently and stay there for longer than it takes to make a short speech. Of course, by mingling with the IDPs Mr Zardari would be risking his life; he is indeed a prime target. Not the usual number of houris, say the Taliban, but double that number await the maniac who may succeed in killing him, but he has to take that risk; it comes with his job. Or is staying alive all that counts? Not so, say the soldiers fighting the Taliban and the brave policemen who are returning to Swat notwithstanding the Taliban lurking in the neighbouring hills; and if Mr Zardari's wife was alive she would have told him, as she told me: "It matters not how you die but how you live."
Something for which Mr Zardari can make collective amends on behalf of our leaders is to travel abroad with a modest entourage as befits a state that is bankrupt. To land in Washington with as large a security detail as he did recently was fatuous. The Americans, as we know, are paranoiac about security; they provide sufficient protection to their guests to ward off a whole lashkar of militants. All Mr Zardari's guards must have done during the visit was to shop in relays.
On official visits the handful of "workers" in the entourage do all of the work, the rest are "drones" travelling purely as a reward for services rendered. A decade or more ago we could perhaps afford such pampering, today we cannot. So upset was the Norwegian prime minister at one conference when she discovered that her commercial airliner was instructed to "hold and circle" while Mr Nawaz Sharif's VVIP chartered flight was given priority to land that she turned around to the sole aide accompanying her to the same conference and directed: "Cut the aid we give them. They are just wasting our money."
The number of bullet-proof vehicles provided is another issue that could be revisited. The other day a politician who has been allotted such a vehicle ordered a spare set of bullet-proof tyres at a cost of $80,000. Although he paid for it himself, as his fortune is considerable, others are presumably entitled to spares at government cost. Considering that many of the VIPs issued with bullet-proof cars are not on the murder list of any organisation or group barring possibly irate wives, golf partners or tenant farmers the protection accorded seems excessive. There are numerous other examples where a modicum of common sense could save the exchequer billions.
The money so saved could be diverted to provide blackboards for some of the 15,000 government schools that have no blackboards; the 30,000 that have no textbooks; the 18,000 that have not sufficient furniture and the 20,000 that have no toilets. Of course it will not be able to build the 4,000 schools that have no structures but it would at least be able to buy the building materials for some of them. Or else savings could be diverted to provide transport to the nearly 2,000 pregnant women who die annually while on their way to a healthcare facility for want of transportation. Or help train more nurses and hence improve the present nurse-patient ratio which stands at an appalling 1 nurse to 30,000 people. This and much else lie in the power of Mr Zardari's government to do, hopefully he will, and inform us through a press release just how many benefited as a result.
