Daily Times

Over the last three months, I have been invited to — as a listener or as a speaker — a number of workshops, seminars, dialogues, discussions, conferences and roundtables in Islamabad and Lahore where academics, journalists, civil society representatives, politicians, bureaucrats and citizens have been in attendance. When I look back on these gatherings, a number of patterns, especially regarding the participation of politicians, become clear.

In most of these meetings, politicians were invited so that they could interact with ‘experts’ of various sorts, get more information on specialised subjects and, with the help of dialogue, all participants would be more informed to reach more reflective conclusions. But, almost invariably, most of the politicians who were invited never showed up; some did not even show up after confirming their attendance at times as close as one hour before the event!

When politicians did show up, they were invariably late. And we are not talking about being 10 to 15 minutes late, we are talking about being late by a few hours. If they were supposed to be in the morning session, it would be towards the end of the session or in the next session that they would show up. And usually there is not even an apology for being tardy. More interestingly, they feel that when they do show up, the entire programme should be altered to focus on them and their participation.

Politicians are also often in a hurry to leave as well. So, rather than interact with the participants, they prefer to say what they have to say and then they usually excuse themselves by saying they have another meeting to go to. It usually seems pointless to actually try to invite them to anything. If they do not have the time to listen, think, and interact, what is the point of inviting them?

Let me give a few particular examples. In a recent meeting on education, a politician, known for his interest in education, after confirming that he was going to come, cancelled at the last minute. While the session went by smoothly and there was some great discussion between the participants (probably because the attendees did not have to deal with a political speech for or against the government), if the objective was to involve politicians in the debate process, it was defeated. In another case, a politician, supposed to show up at 11.00 am, turned up at 3.00 pm. And then he wanted the relevant session to happen according to his arrival and his speech to be listened to. It was funny but quite frustrating for the organisers. The politician was humoured but he did make a joke of himself through his tardiness. And then, immediately after having his say, he said he had to be at a tea somewhere and then disappeared. It was a lovely performance and exercise in endearing politicians to the people.

What is also interesting is that politicians do not like to be a participant or panelist in a workshop or conference. They want to be the chief guest, the chair or the head honcho. So, it is almost impossible to invite more than one politician per session. How many heads can one have for a session? And then, when that person does not show up, shows up late or has to go very quickly, it messes up the entire programme and defeats the purpose of having a debate between all stakeholders.

Having a debate or dialogue with politicians is made even harder by the fact that it is seldom clear, for most political parties, as to who is the main person leading on a particular topic. If we want to discuss education, who should be invited from the PPP, PML-N, PTI and so on, and who should it be for health issues, or human rights and justice or freedom of information issues? The top leaders are out of the question as they are too busy and too hard to approach. The second tier, in most parties, is quite uneven. Some have party influence but no interest in many of the issues faced by the people or interest in getting into a dialogue about these issues. Others might have an interest but do not have the ear of the leader and influence in the party. So how should one go about structuring a dialogue/debate with these politicians?

The prevailing wisdom seems to be that if, on average, we invite around 100 politicians to an event, only 30 to 40 will respond and only 15 to 20 odd politicians will show up. And they will not be on time and will not be there for the whole time. This is considered to be normal. If they are the main guest, the main speaker, etc., there is a higher chance they will show up, but then if you make one of them the main guest, it is unlikely that a lot of others will show up, especially other senior ones and those from opposing parties.

So, how does one set up dialogue, debate and interaction with the political players in this country? How can an interface between civil society, academia and politicians take place? I have not come across a successful model so far.

The political parties do not have any think tanks of their own. This makes it difficult to know where the policy thinking for these parties happens, who the key people are and what are the levers that can be used for creating a dialogue/debate on any particular topic. Some parties do supposedly have core groups working on specific issues, but even the knowledge of who is in the group and/or who heads a group are not really public knowledge.

Lastly, there is the issue of language. Why do people insist on speaking in English even at gatherings where there are hardly any non-natives of Pakistan? I have been to seminars where one can see that a person is feeling constrained due to language problems and is not able to convey what he/she wants to say but will still stick to English. The switchover to Urdu or another language only happens when possibilities in English have been exhausted. Politicians are no different in this regard. In one case, a politician, supposed to talk for 10 minutes, stopped after only a minute or so. The audience was surprised as few politicians cede the podium given the opportunity. The host later confirmed that it was due to the fact that the politician insisted on speaking in English and he was done in just a minute. Why he did not want to continue in Urdu is anybody’s guess.

Given the lack of structure in the political parties and the lack of specialisation and consequence that politicians seem to represent themselves when they appear at functions and not their party, at least officially, how does civil society structure interaction with political parties where surely such interaction is important for a well functioning governance structure?

The writer is an Associate Professor of Economics at LUMS (currently on leave) and a Senior Advisor at Open Society Foundation (OSF). He can be reached at fbari@sorosny.org