Daily Times

It is a season of conspiracies. The public and media fascination with the invisible yet visible hand is insatiable. With speculation rife on the government’s sustainability, each implication in the print and electronic media becomes a possible candidate of a juicy scandal to be milked by those in search of cheap sensationalism. As in recent times, the major actors in most scandals hover around a falling and corrupt government, a tainted ISI and a dithering army taking conflicting stances on American influence on its policy and sovereignty. Starting with the Raymond Davis case, fuelled by American encroachment in Abbottabad in an attempt to unearth Osama, ignited by the atrocity at the naval headquarters in Karachi, the latest memo issued by Mansoor Ijaz implicating the president’s plea against the army to the US are all indicators of the burgeoning pressure the state or non-state actors are creating to make a fall guy. Who that fall guy would be is not hard to guess in a country where power wrestling match will decide the winner of this contest of betrayal and treason.

The whole affair stinks of a B-movie predictable thriller where witnesses from nowhere crop up to build a ‘who dunnit’ suspense only to peter out into an anti-climatic finish. That is how the Memogate scandal looks like ending up. Mr Mansoor Ijaz looks, acts and speaks like a man who does not really know his bearings. He keeps promising and swearing on revealing the truth with an aggressive mixture of desi (local) Punjabi and slang American English. That the memo was delivered on May 10th, days after the Osama bin Laden killing by American encroachment and then it took Mr Ijaz a good two months to write and then rewrite an op-ed piece on it in the Financial Times on October 10th to reveal the truth is itself quite a lame twist in this scandal. His desperation to attract attention to this issue or rather himself makes the whole script very unconvincing. To add to this political melodrama, Husain Haqqani acts as the aggressive defender and then later the victimised scapegoat who, to save the skin of his lord and master, sacrifices his own position. The focus stays on Mansoor Ijaz and Haqqani with an occasional statement saying nothing by Prime Minister Gilani. The main actor and character of this flick thriller, President Zardari, is playing his usual disappearing role. He seems to have this knack of dissolving away when any scandal heat is on. With such an uproar on his dubious existence after this scandal, one would expect a statement, a denial or an explanation but with condescending dismissal he continues to survive crisis after crisis by finding the flimsiest of loopholes as the basis for rendering the most serious of allegations baseless.

The role of the army and the ISI has become more and more clouded. With American incursion on Pakistani soil right under their noses in Abbottabad, their image as an all-strong force in Pakistan had taken a serious dent. Their international relations with one of the strongest of their supporters in all army-led regimes, i.e. the US, had betrayed them causing open rifts that to date have not been repaired. Losing support from foreign allies, the army received strong support from the political parties when the US threatened to take unilateral action if the Pakistan Army did not remove the Haqqani network from our soil. An All-Parties Conference (APC) boosted army stance and it looked as if the civil and army relationship will unite against the US. However, the recent Memogate scandal has really cast doubts on the sustainability of this alliance. No matter how ridiculous this scandal may be, it just shows the discord between the powerbrokers of this country. Whatever the truth may be, the shadows cast on the credibility of our already corruption-riddled government and our weakened military institutions are areas of concern for all Pakistanis. A bankrupt and torn apart Pakistan is easy prey for the pressure lobbies existing in the US and India.

This scam, like many other scams, may result in a futile appointment of a commission for enquiry and then vanish into thin air as other more juicy scandals become new fodder for the media to absorb. To see the country mired in such political debacle is all the more unfortunate at a time when the stakes for regional supremacy are heavily in favour of South Asia. In the global context, the US and Europe are in dire straits. Never since the Second World War have these two countries been so economically battered. US deficit had reached almost a bankruptcy stage earlier in the year and European countries are queuing up for declaring themselves insolvent. Italy follows Greece and France may well be the new addition to the long line of countries on the verge of teetering over the narrow line of economic purgatory. The forecast for the next few years for these hitherto economic stalwarts is extremely discouraging. Thus, investments in the future are bound to flow towards Asian countries. With China and India already maturing with the inflow of investments, the natural diversion of capital would be Pakistan and many other countries that have huge demand gaps in many basic and advanced industries. A recent example is the upsurge in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in our neighbourhood and the rapid rise of the Vietnamese economy. Thus, for Pakistan to miss this regional upsurge will be irreparable and tragic.

It is completely futile to expect this government to ever think in terms of these global opportunities as their absolute dedication to enhancing their personal capital flows renders any thought of capitalising on this global economic diversification impossible. The only hope for the people of Pakistan is that some day these scandalous fictitious thrillers reach a climax where the culprits are put to the wire either by a strong legal suit or by a stronger vote of dissent and change by the public in the coming elections. The alternative of letting this cheap political soap opera continue is a luxury unaffordable for those whose lives and livelihoods are still attached to the fortunes of this country.

The writer is a consultant and can be reached at andleeb.abbas1@gmail.com