PCNS recommendations

Whatever little hope had emerged from the unanimously proposed guidelines for future engagement with the United States by the Parliamentary Committee on National Security (PCNS) seems to be evaporating. The developments over the weekend, both in Pakistan and the United States, are not very encouraging, clearly suggesting that the unanimous adoption of these guidelines by the joint session of parliament, opening Monday, remains a formidable challenge.
Of course, the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) was expected to oppose resumption of Nato supplies through Pakistan but sternness underlying its warning is far more sharper than the norm. Not only the drivers of containers have been 'advised' against taking the risk, the Pakistani political forces too have been warned of serious consequences of supporting the committee recommendations. That the parliamentary opposition has taken a hard-line is strange, if not intriguing. Their members on the PCNS were part of the unanimously proposed new terms of engagement in the rather longish in-camera conclave, and there was no dissenting note whatsoever. But not anymore, prompting the question why now. Such a conflicting stance could be expected during the debate in the joint session, but it has been taken even before the parliament for debate, defies logic. It was the Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly who first rejected the recommendations made by the PCNS, disowning even his own party representative's standpoint, followed by a joint stand taken by all the opposition parties including the JUI (F), PML-like-minded, PPP (Sherpao) and some Fata members.
If there was any doubt about the criticality of these developments Maulana Fazlur Rehman's speech at his party's rally on Sunday should help remove it. And no less disappointingly, the Americans have helped vindicate the parliamentary opposition, by reportedly refusing to punish the perpetrators of the deadly Salala strike last November, as against the GHQ's firm stand that the attack was the cold-blooded murder of 24 Pakistani soldiers.
On the face of it, everything was going smooth and the reopening of the Nato supply route subject to some new conditions was almost a settled thing. As to what forced the opposition to come out so strongly against the government is not clear - except, perhaps, for the assertions made both by Chaudhry Nisar Ali and Maulana Fazlur Rehman that they would not let the parliament stamp the government's 'understanding' already reached with Washington on the restoration of the Nato supply route. Well it may be a misplaced perception, and the parliamentary opposition parties may be closing their ranks to become a unified electoral alliance against the ruling coalition parties. But we are not going into that kind of speculation. Under our immediate focus is the fate of the PCNS recommendations in the joint session. There has to be a fuller, deeper debate with members from both sides of the aisle taking their public positions - as against their hush-hush, in-camera positions that generally conclude in results at variance with the people's aspirations. For a parliamentary decision to win public support, it must reflect the wider sentiment. No doubt the parliamentary committees are exposed to hard and very often bitter ground realities, as must have been the case with the PCNS deliberations. But these would be palatable to the man in the street only if these have the unanimous approval of their representatives in the parliament.
Therefore the critical challenge for the joint session is to evolve total multi-party consensus of the house on any recommendation, irrespective of its importance to future terms of engagement with the United States in the war against terrorism. The verdict emanating from a divided house would create further fissures, particularly at this point of time when the government and opposition parties tend to nurture conflicting perspectives on a number of foreign policy issues.
In the long run, a unanimous position of the PCNS recommendations, howsoever minor, would be easier to carry forward. Hopefully, being a democratic society run by an elected government, the Obama administration would understand the government's difficulty in restoring the Musharraf-era military co-operation. It is not strange that sometimes governments do fail to win parliamentary support on issues of make-or-break importance to them. After all, Woodrow Wilson had also failed to win over the US Senate to break through international isolation by taking his country into the League of Nations, an organisation that was essentially his brainchild.