Pakistan in Media

Opinionated Media Coverage

Musharraf and Zardari lecturing in US

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Currently we have one ex-president working the lucrative lecture circuit in the US, whilst the incumbent president is doing the rounds of a less lucrative but perhaps more important set of venues. His latest foray into public speaking was at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London, where it is reported that his prepared and scripted speech went well but that the question and answer session was a little less than informative. Much has been made in recent days of the fact that our president has been out of the country for one hundred days out of the last year – which also means that he was in-country for 265 of them. He will doubtless argue that his globetrotting is to chase down the billions that we need to sustain us as a nation; and that it is the job of the prime minister to run the show day-to-day. He would also argue that engagements such as that at the IISS enable him to put our point of view more effectively.

Both arguments hold water. We have what may charitably be described as ‘an image problem’ outside our coterie of very close friends. There is little by way of good news coming out of Pakistan these days and the ‘talking up’ of the win in Swat is dangerously close to the famous – and very premature – George Bush ‘victory’ speech after the fall of Saddam. In a world where communication everywhere is instant our follies, foibles and failings are all too easily paraded, and we need to work hard to counter the largely negative view that much of the rest of the world has of us. We need to promote trade – and Mr Zardari pointed to a need for us to access European markets in his speech – and ‘trade not aid’ is a useful positive headline. He has what is arguably one of the world’s least enviable jobs, and it is unreasonable to expect any government of Pakistan to ‘fix’ its burden of problems within a year or two – or ten. He has put our case to a sceptical audience in London, and there will be other difficult engagements with thorny questions lying in wait wherever he goes, so we wish him well. But we would also add a note of caution – a hundred days out of country may have been productively spent, but how well-spent were the days spent on home soil?
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posted @ 4:30 PM,

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