Pakistani ambassadors and an angry Prime Minister
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It’s never happened before in the history of Pakistan: Prime Minister Imran Khan convened a Zoom meeting of all Pakistani ambassadors posted in foreign countries, addressing them live before the country and the world... and he was angry.
As expected, it has not gone down well with the ambassadors. While watching the show, one could see signs of anxiety and insult written over many faces. Being in service, they cannot speak about the damning address Khan made, but three retired former foreign secretaries have spoken their mind to the Pakistani media and the public. They accuse the PM of ‘grandstanding’, ‘using a broad brush,’ painting good and bad in the same color, and not recognizing the constraints or resource limitations the envoys confront. Whatever the nature of complaints Pakistani citizens have with their embassies and whatever Khan’s feelings about treating citizens with respect, the foreign office officialdom is left feeling slighted, belittled, and even humiliated.
It is a justifiable question to ask: why did he go public on television with a list of complaints, chiding them publicly when such conferences are held routinely at the foreign office? The answer lies in Imran Khan’s leadership style and politics. Like many leaders emerging through long political struggles, Khan has increasingly embraced populism, over-sensitivity with public grievances and an anti-elitist view. He represents typically a middle-class political culture that regards all layers of the elites of Pakistan as anti-people, self-centered and exploitive. His experience with the bureaucratic elite of the country is not a happy one-- one he accuses of obstructionism and being corrupt to the core when given license.
Actually, he expressed a popular sentiment about the bureaucracy by saying they must abandon their ‘colonial attitudes’ toward their own people. Such a view is a reverberation of voices of citizens in the streets, and quite an accurate representation of dejection, delayed justice and bribery at the hands of officials dealing with the public.
One cannot miss the political angle of the event. Coinciding with the address to the ambassadors was a presidential ordinance to grant voting right in future elections to roughly nine million Pakistani expatriates scattered around the world. Though controversial, and technically difficult to implement, it is one of the electoral promises of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), and something very close to the heart of the Prime Minister for many reasons.
The Pakistani expats are the largest donors of financial contributions to the PTI; seems its rise was bankrolled by non-resident Pakistanis who grew sick of corruption of the two major dynastic parties— the Pakistan Muslim League (N) and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), considering Khan as a savior to make Pakistan good and new from bad and old. It seems by representing their feelings of anguish in berating the ambassadors, he played to this gallery for continued support and contribution.
Like many leaders emerging through long political struggles, Khan has increasingly embraced populism, over-sensitivity with public grievances and an anti-elitist view. He represents typically a middle-class political culture that regards all layers of the elites of Pakistan as anti-people, self-centered and exploitive.
Rasul Bakhsh Rais
However, Khan didn’t make up the list of the complaints he publicly aired to the ambassadors. He believes in digitizing governance and the use of communication technology to improve governance with the obvious objective of making public offices accessible and transparent in dealing with citizens. The Citizens Portal located at the PM office is one these effective tools where any citizen anywhere using an easy app can register a complaint against any office or department of an embassy abroad. It stays there until it is satisfactorily resolved with feedback from the complainants. The Prime Minister had a bundle of them in hand feverishly waving and hardly hiding his anger and frustration. He is right in asserting that foreign workers, particularly in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, are an economic asset for the country. Their monthly remittances are now well over $2 billion a month, more than the monthly exports of all goods and services. Without this level of inflow of foreign exchange, Pakistan would have been forced to borrow heavily or defaulted on the repayments of loans.
Certainly, foreign workers deserve better treatment than they have been meted out by certain sections of the embassies dealing with them. What irked the PM and the nation, are reports of extortion, bribes and rejection of documents filed by overseas Pakistanis without valid reasons and proper guidance. They face stiff neck, arrogant officials with little regard and acknowledgement of their sacrifices, hard work and earnings for the country.
The grievances are legitimate and longstanding against the embassies and the failure of the ambassadors to rectify the situation is a point of grave concern. However, the way Prime Minister Khan has approached the issue may demoralize the foreign service. The purpose of making the embassies more service oriented and sensitive to the problems of the expat Pakistani community cannot be achieved by public bashing. It requires reforms, careful postings, training and provision of resources.
- Rasul Bakhsh Rais is Professor of Political Science in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, LUMS, Lahore. His latest book is “Islam, Ethnicity and Power Politics: Constructing Pakistan’s National Identity” (Oxford University Press, 2017).
Twitter: @RasulRais
