Rhetoric devoid of substance

Prime Minister Gilani couldn't be more rhetorical and sonorous than what he was in his address to the National Assembly on Monday evening - after keeping almost mum all these days over the US clandestine operation against Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad. And he couldn't be more evasive, if not misleading, either - on questions that have being troubling the people of Pakistan over the whole week.
Then, to the utter disappointment of the common man, he chose to speak in high-flown English, earning in return the parliamentary opposition's rebuke of talking to his "foreign masters", instead of saying something concrete for domestic consumption. He was expected to calm the frayed nerves of the man on the street, but he didn't strike a common chord with him by speaking in his language - though his unease with heavy diplomatic jargon that laced his prepared address was apparent and he must have felt greatly relieved by reverting to Urdu towards the end of his address.
Given that much of his speech was devoted to events of bygone days, which fall in the definition of history, Prime Minister Gilani looked to be skirting the real issue. No small wonder then he is being accused of deliberately avoiding telling the 'whole truth' about how Osama bin Laden had been missing all along from the Pakistan's always-look-busy intelligence outfits' radar and what stopped the security forces from interdicting the invading American raiders.
In his speech the prime minister admitted intelligence failure, which wasn't the first admission by the Pakistan government; a couple of days before, the Corps Commanders' forum had conceded the failure of intelligence outfits and an inquiry was accordingly launched. But to qualify this admission by roping in the entire world in this failure was quite obfuscating on his part.
Prime Minister Gilani did not even go as far as the army high command's acknowledgement of the "shortcomings in developing intelligence on the presence of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan". When you say that the "ISI is a national asset and has the full support of the government. (And) We are proud of its considerable accomplishments in the anti-terror campaign" you tend to whittle down your own decision that the agency should be asked to explain its failure in keeping track of Osama bin Laden.
Will such an in-house kind of inquiry satisfy the people, given that they are always sceptical about departmental inquiries? Ideally, there should be a high-powered judicial commission that should look deep and incisively into this failure on the part of our intelligence agencies. Not only that our own people want such a high-level investigation, its independence and impartiality is all the more essential to pacify international public opinion that always doubts the neutrality of the ISI in its drive against the al Qaeda and other Jihadi organisations.
The issue on which the prime minister was expected to enlighten the nation, and he did not, is the failure of our security forces in upholding national sovereignty by protecting territorial integrity. While there may be a variety of public opinions on how Osama had escaped detection and whether his killing was legally justified, the point on which there is no divergence is the stark failure of our security forces in interdicting the invaders on the fateful night of May 2. Instead of lamenting the ISI failure in detecting the al Qaeda leader, the people are concerned about the quality of our national defence and what guarantee there is that next time, the invaders won't try striking our strategic assets.
The prime minister would have been well-advised to have dealt with the issue of national sovereignty and territorial integrity in order to meet people's growing concerns about our capability to defend the country. But he chose to take on the media, accusing it of pandering to slander and hype. Yes, during the week the media was on hype, but why; doesn't he realise that for a good 48 hours nothing was given out by the government to inform the people about the Abbottabad raid - except for a laconic press release issued by the Foreign Office. No wonder, it's the Army Chief General Kayani's prognosis that "incomplete information and lack of technical details have resulted in speculations and misreporting". Having heard the prime minister's speech in the National Assembly, can anybody say that the cause for more 'speculations and misreporting' has ceased to exist? Most definitely not, as many a question that rattles the mind of the citizen remains unanswered.