Mr Nawaz Sharif, you should not be the
foreign minister of Pakistan
, August 25,
2016
He does not have the type
of personality that a foreign minister should have. PHOTO: REUTERS
Since a foreign minister represents his or her country at all
international conferences, he or she has to be highly educated.
Sometimes a
very experienced diplomat is appointed as foreign minister, at other times a
popular politician is selected. Pakistan, being a nuclear
armed state with plenty of problems of its
own, is in urgent need of a foreign minister. But at present,
it is Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (NS) who is doubling as the foreign
minister of the country.
We have had some very good foreign ministers, one of them being
Sahibzada Yaqub Khan, the longest
serving foreign minister of the country. Besides being a retired
general, he knew several languages, and was once our ambassador to the United
States. There have been others, very able lawyers like Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada.
For some strange reason, General Yahya Khan apparently thought he would
make a very good
foreign minister (while being president at the same time). We know what
happened during his reign: the country was dismembered.
As far as I know, NS is
not suited to be our foreign minister. He is fluent only in one
language, he has to read from pieces of paper when he talks in English (which
he does very slowly), and he does not have the type of personality that a
foreign minister should have, like Hillary
Clinton, John Kerry, and of course Sahibzada Yaqub. But it’s our bad
luck that he is the one who decides such things, so we’ll have to exercise the
utmost patience and bear with him, like the unlucky chaps in the foreign
office.
I can imagine NS presiding over a meeting in the foreign office
to discuss how to react to Afghanistan’s latest
tirade against Pakistan.
NS: We
should send our navy and occupy Kabul.
Official:
Sir, Kabul is not a seaport, our navy can’t get there.
NS: I
know there is a lot of water near Kabul, maybe it’s a river port.
Official:
Sir, the river is too shallow and narrow for our navy to get there.
NS: So send the navy to any other town in Afghanistan.
Official:
It’s a landlocked country; you can’t send a warship there.
NS: We
could drop an atom bomb over Kabul?
Official:
The nuclear cloud would be transported to Peshawar and Islamabad within minutes
– thousands of Pakistanis would die as well.
NS:
India? How can the Indians ever think of invading Pakistan?
NS: I
was too young at the time, no wonder I don’t remember it. So why don’t we drop
an atom bomb on Botswana?
Official: We don’t have any disputes with that country; in fact
only India and Afghanistan are bothering
us nowadays.
NS: But
we have to use our nuclear weapons to show everyone that we are a nuclear
state!
Official:
Everyone knows that, sir, we don’t need to carry out any more explosions to
prove it.
NS: So
what do we do with Afghanistan?
Official: You, being the foreign minister, could go there and
tell them that what they’re doing is not
cricket.
Official:
They do, some of those Afghan refugees learned how to play cricket and formed a
team when they went back and they play it pretty well.
NS: I
don’t want to go to Afghanistan. I don’t like their nihari
paaya. Send Sartaj Aziz.
Official:
He’s not the foreign minister – they don’t take him seriously. Why don’t you
appoint someone else as foreign minister?
NS:
What? How dare you suggest such a thing? I’m the only one who can be both prime
minister and foreign minister of Pakistan!
Official:
Yes sir, you are right. There are 200 million people in the country, and only
you can be the foreign minister of Pakistan. I’ll write this in my memoirs.
I’ll tell this to everyone I know, I’ll even tell my grandchildren – east or
west, NS is the best!
Shakir Lakhani
Engineer,
teacher, industrialist, associated with petroleum/chemical industries for many
years. Loves writing, and (in the opinion of most of those who know him),
mentally unbalanced. He tweets @shakirlakhani (twitter.com/shakirlakhani)
http://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/39314/mr-nawaz-sharif-you-should-not-be-the
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