Daily Times

The elevation of Hina Rabbani Khar as the foreign minister of Pakistan from the position of minister of state for foreign affairs has been done keeping in view a few upcoming important foreign assignments, especially the foreign ministerial level peace talks with India on July 27.

Ms Khar is the first Pakistani woman and the youngest person to assume the office of Pakistan’s ministry of foreign affairs. Her appointment to such an important ministerial portfolio can be sighted as another step towards women empowerment. However, it has raised eyebrows of many veteran PPP leaders and political analysts. They are questioning the party leadership’s criterion for her selection.

Ms Khar’s previous affiliation with the PML-Q and later on her move into the ranks of the PPP in the 2008 elections make her a typical example of those who pursue the politics of opportunism. The PPP is one of the most popular and largest political parties with a substantial pool of seasoned politicians, die-hard workers and staunch supporters. It is thus surprising how its leadership could not find a suitable person from within the party to fill the slot that remained vacant for five months after Shah Mehmood Qureshi’s forced departure from the foreign office. The PPP seems to have lost a big pool of its devoted and competent party-men who had been pretty close to Benazir Bhutto in her lifetime. Many of them have distanced themselves from the party under one or the other excuse while a number of them have been sidelined by the party leadership on different occasions since it assumed power in 2008. Her selection reflects that the PPP no longer enjoys the support of its veterans and the vacuum between the estranged PPP leaders and the present leadership is widening with each passing day. This portfolio could have been used for reconciliation and to bring estranged party leaders back into the mainstream.

Ms Khar is going to represent Pakistan at the Association for South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) forum on July 22-23 in Bali, Indonesia, while on its sidelines, she will also hold talks with the artful Hillary Clinton and the articulate Yang Jiechi, her counterparts hailing from the US and China. But her end of the month meeting with her Indian counterpart S M Krishna in New Delhi will decide her competence to handle her newly won portfolio. At present, Pakistan’s foreign policy is facing various challenges. We are in a state of tension with both the US and our neighbour, India. The menace of terrorism also impinges upon our already shattered foreign policy. In these circumstances, how the lady copes with her assignment and how long she stays will determine the wisdom behind her selection. *