Sixty-four years ago, almost to the day today, premiered Beckett's Waiting for Godot. The absent character, Godot, gave rise to all kinds of theories - religious (divinity questioned?), social (proletariat vs. bourgeoisie?) and political (allegory of cold war?) Our waiting for a Foreign Minister - the absent character - is no less than the Theatre of the Absurd that Beckett promoted. For the Oxford man by the side of Kaptan the issue is next only to Panama gate. For the Oxford man competing for space with his father it is a big enough issue to launch a thousand miles march. For the less imaginative TV anchors it is an issue to revert to when they can't arrange a shouting match at short notice.
Pardon our naiveté, but what is the issue?
We have had times without a regular FM. Recall Bhutto and Aziz Ahmed; recall Musharraf and Inam-ul-Haq; recall Yahya and no one. We have had times with regular FMs Did either experience make us the darling of the world? Surely, competence is not an issue. The same Sartaj has been a 'full' FM, and no one thought any less of him. Age doesn't seem to be catching up with him, and he has the spare engine of Fatemi.
And it can't be about authority. You can make anyone the FM and there will be no smoke of authority blowing out of the Foreign Office chimneys. Authority does not reside in the old Scherezade Hotel, which can now only rejoice in spinning one thousand and one stories. To us the issue is not of the absent Minister but a lost Ministry. There was a time when the Foreign Office boasted of the best and the brightest. Whenever we got the chance to interact with them - more often than not they were quite indulgent to the exporters - it was like sitting at the feet of the Master. They had both style and substance - and the stature to open all doors for us, but not before imparting good advice, and a stern reminder that Pakistan's good name came before carpets or bed linen.
Today our interaction with their Excellencies is more constrained. Neither side seems to need the other. But we can't escape the diaspora and our local contacts and the pictogram we get is of inert Missions struggling to justify their existence.
Words are a diplomat's currency. If you don't speak the local language you only play on the local Foreign Office turf. In the non-English speaking world you rarely accost a Pakistani diplomat whose competence of the local language goes beyond ordering a meal, if that. In the English-speaking world their command is rarely good enough to manage the cut and thrust of nuances, the idiom of diplomacy.
Winning friends and influencing people is the art of diplomacy. For that you need a natural gift for reaching out to people. Few of our current lot are particularly endowed with such a gift, and where they are they expend it on fellow Pakistanis. Chicken Biryani trumps chicken ala Kiev, and the wives have a lot more to talk to the Pakistani ladies than to the wife of a Hungarian parliamentarian. Looking after their citizens is a primary responsibility for most Embassies. As a matter of routine the Embassy advises them of the trouble spots to avoid, and the embassy is the first port of call if the citizen gets into any kind of trouble. In our case Embassy is more often the port to avoid - unless large investments in chicken biryani have earned you the right of access.
Of course, these are generalisations and we have no doubt there are notable exceptions. Besides, it is the system, and not individuals, that interests us. We see the system at risk.
In his piece in one of the dailies some weeks ago a former Foreign Service officer made a passionate plea for Foreign Policy to be shaped by professionals, under the command of the Foreign Secretary. He drew a parallel with Defence matters and the role of the GHQ. [Indeed, he seemed to imply a secondary role to the Foreign Minister. So much for all this palaver over the absent FM!] It will be caddish for us to wonder what world the distinguished Mandarin is living in. His is the stuff of standard textbooks of yore: congruence of responsibility and authority; precedence of 'hands-on experience' over dilettantes, no matter how gifted; unity of command.
The world has moved on and the textbooks rewritten. Today, it is performance management systems (PMS) and the entire apparatus of accountability that drives the discourse on governance. We have no way of knowing if the Foreign Office has in place a professionally designed PMS. If there is one, could we have the temerity to ask what goals, organisational and individual, are assigned to our diplomats, how are these goals established, and are the two goals integrated in a manner where 'personal growth' contributes to attainment of overall foreign policy objectives? Has the PMS made performance appraisal less subjective? How does it link up with training, career planning and progression?
Accountability, in the sense of retribution for the job not done or done improperly, is organic to a working PMS. From what we hear Accountability remains a foreign concept. On the rare occasion when a head rolls, or someone gets banished to the gulags, it is never for reasons of sub-par performance.
We would be all for the FO taking the reins - if they can demonstrate they have what it takes. If they did there won't be place for the 'outsider' in New York, especially with the spare engine in over-drive to save the plums for the tribe. Soft image cannot undo hard realities. You can have all the mango parties and catwalks and Abida Perveens you want but one bad piece in New York Times and your soft image is in tatters.
Foreign Policy cannot sanitise domestic policies, whose child it is. But a competent Foreign Service can do a lot to contain the damage. If, however, it is a Ministry of cyphers it is in no position to 'demand'. It will have to settle for crumbs. An FM without a competent team would be like a stapler without staples. The correct demand would be for a more proficient Foreign Service rather than a full time FM. shabirahmed@yahoo.com