Mr. Muhammad
Nawaz Sharif,
Prime Minister of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
Your Excellency,
I was much impressed with your address to the nation and the
initiatives mentioned therein. I am sure that your team of capable senior
executives and experts must have worked out detailed plans taking into account
all the possible and selecting the best options. I do not claim to be wiser
than your team, but consider it my national duty to point out the following
points that come to my mind just in case something may have escaped their
meticulous attention.
1.
Chinese Mega-projects: In
finalizing the various ambitious megaprojects with the Chinese government such
as the highways, railways, mass-transit, power and other projects we should
ensure that Pakistani consultants, engineers and contractors get a substantial
participation at all stages of the projects. This will help our local talent to
acquire the technical know-how and continue similar work in all areas in
Pakistan in future independently while maintaining the same quality. This will
also help in the future maintenance of the projects. You may be aware that a
major reason not being able to fully utilize the installed power capacity in
Pakistan is that the power plants are dependent on foreign experts for annual
maintenance and breakdown services. I would also suggest that our Chinese
friends be persuaded to carry out as much manufacturing, fabrication and
assembly of the hardware in Pakistan as possible.
2.
Negotiations with Taliban:
This topic has been discussed extensively in press, television and drawing
rooms, but there seems to be no agreement on the strategy. I think that we
should try to persuade the Taliban that we share their dream of establishing an
ideal Islamic state in Pakistan based on Shariah as good as or even better than
in Saudi Arabia. This has been possible for the Saudis because they have great
economic power due to which they can resist external pressures. If we try to
implement Shariah fully at this stage, we may face the same fate as
Afghanistan. So the Taliban should give us 10 years to develop our economic and
military strength to such a level that we may be able to resist external
pressures successfully. In the life of nations 10 years is not a long time. The
Taliban may be allowed to keep their weapons, but they should be under oath not
to use them against Pakistanis. They should also agree to suspend their
overseas military operations and concentrate on dawah. Meanwhile, GOP
should offer large numbers of scholarships to youth from Waziristan to study in
schools, colleges and universities. Road works and other development projects
should also be started in Waziristan.
3.
Law & order in Karachi:
The only effective way of maintaining law and order in a city or town is
frequent police patrol of roads and lanes. This is how the Americans changed
the face of New York and Chicago which were worse than Karachi in the 1960s.
Unfortunately over the past decade or so police patrols seem to have completely
disappeared from the roads and lanes of Karachi. All the police and other
security machinery is totally committed to guard and escort duties for
ministers, high officials, foreign missions and VIP visitors. An expensive
camera surveillance system for the entire city was installed but it seems to
have stopped working. Perhaps a special federal security police may be formed
which could be deployed for frequent and effective patrolling of the roads and
lanes of troubled cities and towns and should be sufficiently disciplined and
controlled so that it does not indulge in harassment of or extortion from the
citizens.
Yoyr sincerely,
Muhammad Nasim
mnasim_99@ yahoo.com
Note: I would have sent this directly to the PM, but could not find his email address.
