Another U-turn
The PTI
government in its relatively short time in office has betrayed a tendency to go
off half-cocked on important policy decisions and then be forced, once the
implications come back amidst fresh controversies virtually every day, to
retreat (popularly castigated as a habit of taking U-turns). The latest example
of this style of governance is provided by the federal Minister of Planning and
Development Khusro Bakhtiar being forced to deny in a press conference that
Saudi Arabia was being made part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)
framework. The federal Minister of Information Fawad Chaudhry accompanying
Bakhtiar had announced two weeks ago that Saudi Arabia was being included in
CPEC to turn it into a trilateral arrangement. Now Khusro Bakhtiar had to step
in to do damage control amidst reports that China is perturbed at not being
consulted prior to the announcement regarding Saudi Arabia’s entry into CPEC. These
reports say Pakistan didn’t consult China before including Saudi Arabia despite
China’s assurances to the new PTI government that they were open to changes
through mutual consultation. It would be well to remember that soon after its
induction into office, the PTI government sent out mixed, if not negative vibes
about CPEC, including interviews and statements by federal cabinet ministers
and advisers hinting at concerns about the enormous debt burden being incurred
by Pakistan because of Chinese investment in infrastructure etc. The fact is
that both countries had agreed to keep CPEC a bilateral project until 2020. China
agreed to open CPEC to include Afghanistan in 2017. However, Pakistani
officials say since the situation in Afghanistan is not improving, so Saudi
Arabia has been included.
This manoeuvring
by the government to include Saudi Arabia in CPEC without prior consultation
with the principal stakeholder and financier of the whole project, i.e. China,
smacks of an unprecedentedly unilateral approach. The Chinese may value our
long standing friendship enough not to embarrass us publicly on this, but the fact
that they have been bypassed hardly constitutes wisdom. The Chinese Ambassador
has come on record as pledging to reconsider CPEC or any of its detailed
projects through mutual consultation. Pakistan cannot, indeed should not
attempt to bypass or ignore our friendly benefactor. Although Khusro Bakhtiar
spoke of other countries also joining CPEC, this cannot be dictated to China as
a unilateral fiat. After all they are the ones investing $ 50 billion plus in a
country that is hardly the destination of choice for global investors. With its
rash announcement of the induction of Saudi Arabia without so much as a nod
towards China, and now the posthaste retreat, Pakistan has ended up
embarrassing if not annoying both allies. This is hardly the way to conduct
sensitive and delicate negotiations with actual or potential benefactors. The
government’s hope to get enough economic and financial help from China and
Saudi Arabia (and possibly the UAE) to be able to avoid the IMF is hardly
likely to be helped by this hasty, ham-handed manner of conducting economic
diplomacy with strategic implications. The government is angling for deferred
payments again for oil from Saudi Arabia and asking Riyadh to deposit funds
with us to stave off a foreign currency reserves crunch. China has also been
asked for similar deposits. But with this latest gaffe in the conduct of
foreign relations, especially with two such critical allies, the government may
well end up falling between both stools and be left in the tender embrace of
the IMF after all.
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