Saying all the right things…

But somehow they did not click

The prime minister regaled us Monday evening with his much-awaited speech, a speech that had been postponed earlier because he wanted to make it when he had something more cogent to expound upon. In a rather rambling discourse on the situation prevailing in the country, the prime minister appeared to hark back to the halcyon days of his previous terms when he was master of all that he surveyed and could do exactly as he so wished. The populace at the time was delirious with a sense of well being and happiness only for usurpers to rudely upset the applecart. One also got the feeling that had there been continuity in his leadership as there has been in the Punjab since the 1980s, the nation would have reached untold heights in prosperity.

One also sensed the onerousness of the task ahead after all the wrongs done in the previous five years by the incompetent and corrupt government of the PPP. They had done everything wrong. They did not even have power lines set up for the Neelum Valley power project, among many other complains. They had done everything wrong and left the PML-N with the distasteful task of setting everything right again as in the past. WAPDA, Railways, PIA had gone to the dogs.

Mian Nawaz Sharif touched all the bases, saying all the right things. Power problem would be solved not in three but five years. The war on terror would be won by a nation united under him. The drone attack issue had been discussed with John Kerry and that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon agreed with his view.

There was talk of motorways, communication links, the Gwadar-Kashgar corridor. Kashmir, as usual was the jugular vein and would be sorted out. Terrorism, peaceful relations with neighbours India and Afghanistan. In a few years the people of the Gulf emirates would be coming here looking for jobs as the PM had once famously stated in Doha many moons ago.

Sharif said there should not be nepotism, corruption‚ maladministration and murder of merit and transparency and in case it happened the government would take notice of the situation.

But something just did not click in Nawaz Sharif’s first address to the nation. What was missing was the motivation, the hope, the energy that a leader inspires in his followers. Without these leadership qualities, speeches are simply words – as flat as a week old bottle of soda.

The problem with the speech was that we have heard these same statements ad nauseum every time a new leader comes to power, including, twice before, the PML-N. The sinking feeling was that the same file had been dusted off and with a few changes reflecting the current state of affairs, had been warmed up in a microwave oven to inflict on the toiling natives of this unfortunate country.

Our leaders could do worse than to study the speeches of the great orators of the past, like Quaid e Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Churchill, Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. These leaders, among many others, could galvanize their followers with the power and emotion of their oration, words that came from the depth of their conviction and were visibly evident. Without the emotion, the conviction, they are just words.

One must make it abundantly clear at this juncture that the present government was not asked to come into power. It had done so after a bitterly fought, hideously costly campaign that was won with a thumping majority. Earlier, the PML-N had insisted on a change in the constitution where a prime minister could be elected into office more than twice. Now that Mian Nawaz Sharif has realized this long sought ambition, it is felt that it is high time that a strong, positive, motivational leadership be displayed which can lift up this country by the bootstraps and turn it into a vibrant, progressive and dynamic nation.

The evidence so far has been quite to the contrary. The ministers assigned to the key ministries are the same old loyalists that we had heard on television the past five years. They have not been displaying even a fraction of the initiative that they used to display when they lambasted the government of the past five years. There is an all pervading sense of drift and lack of hope that is in stark contrast to other more aggressive parties who are looking much more purposeful in spite of their own teething troubles.

The recent incident where a man held Islamabad hostage for six hours live on international television while the government dithered and wrung its fingers. The man was many times seen walking around with the guns or lounging in his car. It would have been no problem for a sniper to take him out. So what if he was hit? The man knew he was playing with fire. This insipid response became so unnerving that finally a former lawmaker could take it no more and jumped the man, thus precipitating an end to the crisis. In a kneejerk response, the government people in talk shows tried to belittle the brave Zamurd Khan by spouting inanities like, he should lose weight. The government should be careful who they send into talk shows as the other parties are getting increasingly sharper and the treasury participants seem keener on scoring points with their bosses rather than argue the issues at hand.

It has been ample time since their election victory for the PML-N government to show that they are leading from the front. Till now there seems precious little indication that they have the ability and the will to do just that. They must realise that people in power have to either lead, follow or get out of the way – especially now that there is not just the PPP opposing them.

It is doubtful whether we have anyone at the present time with all the attributes of a great leader. There is a story attributed to Mahathir Mohammad. Malaysia used to have a serious problem with gold smuggling and they could do nothing to stop it. As a result, money and power was going into the hands of criminals. Mahathir altered the duties and tariffs on gold in such a way that smuggling it was not worth the effort. Very soon, the country became one of the biggest gold dealers in the region. Mahathir sought a positive solution and got a positive result. Another thing that a leader should be able to do is to impose his positive attitude on the people. From policies where people believe that if they worked hard within these policies, they can realize their life’s dreams – policies where the earning comes through positive activity rather than through graft and crony capitalism.

This type of creative, out of the box thinking was, sadly not evident in the prime minister’s speech. It is about time his brain trust got down to some serious work and served a more palatable fare to the people.