The Nawaz league

New age confidentiality

Imagine being in a dominant position and calling up someone in a relatively weaker position. Imagine calling up this person in a weaker position and imagine finding out that he recorded your conversation and not only that but he is going around playing this recording for everyone and anyone who is willing to hear it. Then also imagine that you are the most powerful person on earth and perhaps one of the most vindictive persons on earth as well. In fact you are so vindictive that you stood for elections for the most powerful man and won because the last man in the same position made fun of you.

If you can imagine all that then you can very easily imagine how President-elect Donald Trump may have felt soon after his telephonic conversation with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. With our government very proudly releasing the transcript of the conversation in question to the public.

Not only that but the reiteration of the content and the use of language makes Donald Trump seem out of touch with the prevailing geo political situation of this region and for lack of a better word makes him look like an idiot.

Mr Trump may look funny, he may act funny and he may even lack the faintest clue about politics but he is the President-elect of the United States, which in turn has a serious impact on our economic and security situation. Releasing the transcript of a conversation in which he seems out of touch is not going to fare well for our relations with the United States.

As it is the conversation between two heads of states is privileged conversation and it is against diplomatic protocol to release such a conversation to the public especially when no permission to do the same has been given.

Matters of State have been considered sensitive matters and certain protocols have to be adhered while managing these affairs. These protocols are important and the breach of them, have dire consequences on diplomatic ties of the states in question as such breaches create an environment of distrust making it difficult for the states in question to progress forwards.

Our sitting government as of lately has not enjoyed the best track record in the area of confidentiality. Recently a high level meeting between the political leadership and the military leadership took place regarding the national security of the country. Although this meeting was a confidential one the contents of what was discussed got published in a daily newspaper. This resulting created a rift between the army and the ruling elite and the eventual resignation of the information minister.

I do not know what benefit these breaches of confidentiality and these abuses of diplomatic process serve. I am assuming there may be a few but these breaches/abuses create an imbalance, which would preferably be avoided.

Pakistan is suffering from too many problems on too many fronts for us to indulge in diplomatic abuses, which only serve to damage our already weak position.