Editorial: Banality of being Bilawal

Given his puerile statements on sensitive issues, any bilateral engagement during his trip seems doubtful

Hyderabad: Optics apart, nothing much can be expected from the forthcoming visit of Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari to Goa to participate in the meeting of the foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). Given his puerile statements on Kashmir and other sensitive issues recently, there is absolutely no possibility of any bilateral engagement during his trip. This will be the first visit by any Pakistani Foreign Minister since Hina Rabbani Khar’s trip to India in 2011. India had sent out invitations to all the members of the SCO, including Pakistan, and will be holding key ministerial meetings and the summit this year. Bilawal, an entitled dynast, demonstrated his political naivety in recent times by resorting to unhinged outbursts against India and its elected leadership. By this, he is taking an already discredited diplomacy of his country to a new low. In keeping with the long tradition of making anti-India diatribes the core of their national identity, Bilawal recently resorted to a vulgar personal attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and ended up exposing his pathetic ignorance about the ground realities. He should bear in mind that Pakistan, being the epicentre of global terrorism nurturing several deadly terror groups on its soil, is a thoroughly discredited country in the world and is least qualified to comment on elected prime ministers of other countries. The Pakistan minister’s visit comes at a tumultuous time when his country is facing multiple crises on economic, political and social fronts.

The economic crisis has deepened to such an extent that the country has defaulted on foreign loans. In recent weeks, the government slashed subsidies and raised taxes to comply with the bailout terms of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and secure the release of the $1.2 billion portion of the deal that has been stalled since December. But those measures resulted in increases in the price of food, gas and power, inflicting miseries on the people while the leaders of main political parties, including Bilawal’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), are washing their dirty linen in public. This apart, the terror elements continue to have a free run in the country as Bilawal and his colleagues in the government have miserably failed to check terror activities directed against India. On the eve of his visit, India rightly raised concerns over terrorism arising from infiltration across the Line of Control (LoC). New Delhi has made its position clear that it would be very difficult to engage with a neighbour who practices cross-border terrorism as an instrument of state policy. Pakistan must first deliver on the commitment not to encourage, sponsor and carry out cross-border terrorism. India has always desired normal neighbourly relations with Pakistan in keeping with its ‘Neighbourhood First Policy’. Both countries must resolve pending issues in an atmosphere free from terror and violence.

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