PAKISTAN ALL SET TO ‘ENGAGE AFRICA’

Mahtab Bashir

Islamabad

03335363248

mahtabbashir@gmail.com

With the world now crossed by a latticework of connections, the age of territorial conquest is largely over but skirmishes are not. Now, it’s an age of connectivity and those who are good in bilateral trade, investment and economic cooperation are the one who follows the cliché ‘survival of the fittest’ no matter what.

With this belief and commitment, the ambassador of Pakistan to Morocco Hamid Asghar Khan said that ‘not missile-race but strengthening of economy and regional connectivity are the tools to dominate the region’.

Hamid Asghar Khan in an informal chit-chit at Islamabad Club said that China has a trade volume of US$ 150b with African. India, to whom we take on as our foe, has US$ 70b, Turkey having US$ 50b and Pakistan’s trade with African countries is merely by US$ 4.3b adding Africa will emerge as a World Big Market in 2020 and Pakistan will have to catch Africa at African Union partnership levels.

The ambassador said, he categorically told the Prime Minister that over the period of 12 years, Pakistan has not sign any agreement, treaty, deal with any African Country- that has pushed us way back.”      

In a context to a two-day Envoy’s Conference titled ‘Engage Africa’, the ambassador told this scribe that he had given a comprehensive presentation to the Prime Minister Imran Khan focusing Pakistan’s trade, economic and cultural ties with the Morocco in general and African’s countries in Particular.

On a positive vibe, the ambassador said Pakistan has decided to set-up six new diplomatic missions in African countries on an urgent basis in a bid to improve trade ties with them. “These countries include Djibouti, Angola, Rwanda, Uganda, Ghana and Ivory Coast.”

Khan said besides, Pakistan will also open commercial sections in Algeria, Ethiopia, Senegal Nigeria and Kenya. He told that press attaches will be posted in seven African countries. “Next year (2020), Pakistan will organise an international investment and trade conference in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi”, he added.

The ambassador said “We are particularly interested in four areas to promote and project our foreign policy in African. They are namely, political engagement through Pakistani missions, commercial engagement through chambers and business and commerce forums, military to military cooperation and projection of soft image.

Ambassador Hamid informed that Special Assistant to PM on Information & Broadcasting Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan has directed the PTV to provide popular TV dramas to Pakistani missions in Africa free of cost so that they could be dubbed in the local language and telecast on their TV channels.

Sports diplomacy is also part of our policy to bring Pakistan and the African nations closer, he said. “Pakistani top movie star Humayun Saeed has agreed to shoot his next movie in Morocco and Pakistani mission will extend all possible support to him in this regard,” he said.

A seasoned diplomat who joined Civil Services in 1992, Hamid Asghar Khan said an Africa task force has been formed at the Foreign Office to implement the decisions made at the recently concluded ‘Engage Africa Conference’ in Islamabad. “Africa is the second largest continent in the world, spreading over 20% of the world landmass and a collective GDP of over $2.3 trillion. It offers an import market of around $500 billion”, he said adding India has signed a number of trade agreements with African countries but we are progressing with snail-pace.

 

He said Pakistan currently has 15 resident missions in the African countries. “India will have 47 missions in Africa, Turkey has 46 out of 54 total number of countries in the continent”, he said adding these countries already has grown up trade of 70b.

During the conference, the ambassador said, diplomats discussed ways to enhance Pakistan’s diplomatic, economic and cultural ties with the continent. Several think-tanks presented their viewpoints on increasing access to African markets. At the conclusion of the conference, proposals from experts were presented to Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Due to its rich natural resources and growing middle-class consumer market, the World Bank has predicted that most African countries will reach middle-income status by 2025. This presents a tremendous opportunity for Pakistani goods and services, Hamid Khan said.

Terming Africa a continent of the future, the ambassador said the current “age of geo-strategic connectivity” demanded of Pakistan to be part of it and address the growing traditional and non-traditional threats in domain of economy and security.

Hamid Asghar Khan said in his ‘candid and hard-hitting’ presentation, he said Prime minister was not aware of facts and figures (of trade volume) with African countries. “They (Africans) are not living in caves (as we presume), they are the emerging world economy, Morocco has signed FTA with EU, it is exporting electricity to Spain, EU considered Morocco as Prime Favoured Partner (PFP)”, he told.

He regretted that ties with African countries were not given priority in Pakistan’s external relations in the past because there was lack of innovation and creativity in running the foreign policy.

The ambassador called for appointments of cultural attachés, increasing the frequency of business interactions, high-level contacts and close people-to-people relations. “Pakistan is committed to a substantial policy on maintaining a meaningful relationship with Africa. Only through constructive engagement, we can achieve the goal of economic integration for win-win solutions”, he concluded. *

TAKING U-TURNS CAN BE DANGEROUS, MR PRIME MINISTER

Mahtab Bashir

Islamabad

mahtabbashir@gmail.com

03335363248

         PM Imran Khan’s parrot-like rhetoric ‘No NRO’ or ‘Kisi Ko Nahi Choron Ga’ yesterday and today has somehow cemented the belief about him as being ‘intoxicated’. But what about hundreds of thousands of those ‘non-intoxicated’ audience who has been clapping on his daze statement of mind (statement). (English translation of an Urdu tweet by this scribe).   

The kind of political atmosphere that has developed since PTI’s rise to prominence, not just to power, is bad for just about everything and everybody for a variety of reasons. It does nobody any favours, least of all the government itself, when the prime minister speaks in a manner that he did while inaugurating a CPEC-related motorway project (Havelian-Mansehra Section of Hazara Motorway) on Monday and Mianwali on inaugurating several mega projects on Friday.

Since the moment was about projects and roads, and especially since the Chinese ambassador was reportedly in attendance, one expected to be spared the usual “No NRO” speech that the nation is treated to every time the prime minister makes an outing. Yet not only was there a lot of “No NRO,” he also chewed into the opposition a lot more than usual. And nobody was laughing, except senior government officials eager to please the prime minister perhaps, when Imran Khan mimicked Bilawal Bhutto’s Urdu accent. Such antics hardly harm the opposition, especially when everybody is so used to hearing the same remarks over and over again. If anything, Bilawal has been enjoying a wave of social media sympathy since immediately after Imran’s speech.

The PTI and its Prime Minister is disturbed at former PM Nawaz Sharif’s departure for treatment abroad after repeated assertions by Imran Khan not to give an NRO to anyone. The self-righteous PM put the responsibility on the court and blamed the judiciary for maintaining dual standards of justice, one for the powerful and the other for the powerless. He demanded that the judiciary restore public trust in itself.

The Chief Justice of Pakistan, Justice Asif Saeed Khosa, did well to set the record straight, saying the permission to Sharif to travel abroad was given by the PTI government itself rather than any court. The PM needs to make amends for his remarks. Later, he sounded skeptical about the veracity of medical reports on the health of Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) supreme leader Nawaz Sharif, saying he was shocked to see the way the former premier ran up the stairs of the air ambulance. “After seeing him going up the plane stairs, I once again went through the medical reports that suggested he has heart problem, his kidneys are also not functioning properly and that he is a diabetic,” Khan told a gathering in his hometown.

Khan gave undertakings to alliance partners which were difficult to fulfill. Now, each one is asking for its pound of flesh. The MQM wants the fulfilment of huge financial commitments besides taking it into confidence in policymaking. The PML-Q leadership sought a humane treatment for Mr Sharif. The Chaudhries also expressed reservations about the ruling party’s performance, maintaining that if the government failed to undertake course rectification, none would be willing to become Prime Minister within a few months. The GDA complained that the PM was ignoring Sindh. The allies are reminding Khan that he is running the country with a wafer thin majority.

Distresses in the case of the PTI are coming not as single spies but in battalions. The NAB has suddenly felt the need to ensure that accountability is not seen to be one-sided and that this requires looking into the cases of leaders who had been in power for the last 12 months. The ECP, which had allowed the PTI’s foreign assets case linger on for years, has decided to hear it on day-to-day basis.

This ought to have been clear to almost anybody yet, somehow, such facts continue to dodge the prime minister as well as his many special advisors. And three, and perhaps most importantly, such rhetoric no doubt further alienates the opposition, on top of the dozens of arrests and corruption cases of course, and you don’t have to be prime minister to understand just what kind of strain that can put on the process of legislation in Parliament. So ordinary people, whose interests governments are primarily meant to serve through effective legislation, become the biggest losers.

Only very recently, the government had to withdraw as many as 11 presidential ordinances, which it muscled through the House, when the opposition threatened a no-confidence motion against the deputy speaker. How does the government expect this particular, rare example of reconciliation in the national assembly to play out now? Already PTI’s performance is not much to write home about in areas that really matter. Foreign relations stand more or less where PML-N left them, especially the matter getting Uncle Sam to resume the free aid, and the less said about the economy the better. If, somewhat correctly, the finance and foreign ministries are hamstrung because of the rot they inherited, what is the excuse about failure to legislate?

The only way for the PTI to complete its tenure is to seek the opposition’s support. The mainstream opposition wants Mr Khan not because it likes him, but because it needs him to keep the system on rails. They want electoral reforms, NAB reforms and a third tenure for an elected government leading to a smooth transition of power. For this Imran Khan will have to tone down his rhetoric, treat opposition leaders decently and develop working relations with the opposition.

Eventually, surely, the government will realise that taking the opposition along is an essential requirement of representative government. But the longer it takes, the more it will paralyse the whole system. And, as always, the common man will continue to pay the price for a direction-less government trying to find its feet.

AZADI MARCH, AILING NAWAZ SHARIF, ANCHORPERSONS, THE WORD “DEAL” & IT’S TOR’S

The Pakistani media has started mongering about the “deal” between the confined former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the PTI government amid the sudden deterioration of health of Mian Nawaz Sharif. The top notched anchors on the next day summoned by the Islamabad High Court (IHC) for this “secret revelation” and later few of them were imposed penalty and few managed to escape.

 

However, let’s suppose, if the prophecy of anchorpersons sooner or later proved to be right than what would be possible TOR’S of that ‘deal’ is the prompt question that would have been divulged from media persons through their ‘sources’.   

It seems the government has realised, however late, that some of its more eager ministers went perhaps a little too far in making fun, so to speak, of Nawaz Sharif’s illness. Special Assistant to Prime Minister Firdous Ashiq Awan, especially, could have avoided the usual crude jokes, alluding to the former prime minister’s diet, etc, as he was rushed to the hospital because of a dangerously low blood platelet count. Nobody’s cracking any jokes now as the Punjab health minister confirmed that Nawaz did, indeed, suffer a “minor heart attack” two days ago and he was suffering from a disease that causes internal bleeding and diminishes platelets.

And it was largely because of the government’s non-serious attitude that rumours quickly started doing the rounds; from talk of a deal to reports of an air ambulance, fuelled and ready at Lahore airport, waiting to take the ex-PM out of the country just so the government can escape the worst of the blame if something were to happen to Sharif. The manner in which Maryam Nawaz was first denied permission to see her father in hospital, then allowed only a brief visit, could also have been handled better. Eventually Prime Minister Imran Khan himself was forced to issue a statement wishing Nawaz a speedy recovery and allowing Maryam to meet him. But he’ll understand just why PML-N, especially Nawaz Sharif, is dismissing the apparent good-will as too little too late.

Needless to say that this particular episode came at an awkward time for the government; when all its attention was turned towards garrisoning the capital in anticipation of Maulana Fazlur Rahman’s imminent siege of Islamabad. Since PML-N is a big part of the agitation, that too on Nawaz Sharif’s personal insistence (even though Shahbaz was resistant), one can be sure that Nawaz’s deteriorating health and the government’s unimpressive way of dealing with it will come up, repeatedly, during the dharna.

 

Out on bail for the time being, should his health improve, Nawaz will once again cast a long shadow on the present phase of Pakistan’s politics. PTI’s case is not helped by the economic burden its policies have placed on the common man. With wages and jobs diminishing, prices constantly rising, and little chance of relief on the horizon, the job of a united opposition in terms of whipping up public sentiment against the government is made that much easier. Now there’ll be more meat, as they say, in additional allegations of political victimisation with Nawaz naturally paraded as the principal exhibit.

Even convicted and apparently out of the picture for a long time, Nawaz Sharif has managed to out maneuver the government in more ways than one. Surely those in the power need a better understanding of dealing with political prisoners, regardless of the nature of their conviction.

Courtesy DT

DIARY OF A SOCIAL BUTTERFLY

Janoo is so depress, kay don’t even ask. He’s never been one of those ‘Kashmir hamara hai’ brigade like Mulloo’s husband Tony who’s always talked about it like it was a corner plot in Defence left to him by his Dada Jan. Janoo’s always said kay bhai Kashmiris have a right to decide for themselves and that they are owed a pebbly side. But I don’t think so even Janoo, who is Oxford pass as you know, imagined that BJP could behave like a qabza group and say bus it’s ours now. And for me, sub say worst, are those Indian goondas crowing kay now we can have our pick of fair fair Kashmiri girls. Could anything be more ghatiya, more chilling?

Vaisay, it’s not just Janoo who didn’t see it coming. Even our guvmunt didn’t. Or Pinky Pirni who aagay peechhay can see so much into the future. They’ve all gone into shock, like Aunty Pussy did when Jonker’s cheapster wife Miss Shumaila ran away with our family hairlooms. Only last month when Imran came back from his chukker to White House Mulloo called me up to crow on the phone like our maali’s rooster kay did I see how Imran went and conquered America? And Tony is saying kay Kashmir matter is also being sorted, Trump offered to meditate with India. So now I called her back and said, ‘If this had been Nawaz’s time and Moody had stolen Kashmir from under his nose, Imran would have been standing on a container, shouting himself horse about honour. The maulvis would’ve brought everything to a stan still. Where are the maulvis today, haan? Not ONE WORD out of them. And now that Imran’s PM himself, instead of showing eyes to Moody, what’s he doing to avenge Kashmir? He’s busy arresting Maryam Sharif and shutting up journalists! Wah bhai! What ghairat, what honour!’ She pretended she couldn’t hear me. ‘Line is very bad …’ Okay, I said, Janoo will call Tony then. ‘No, no,’ she said, ‘Tony’s gone to his lands.’ ‘I hope not the ones that Dada Jan left him?’ I replied. 

TFT