SAPM Tariq Fatemi’s meeting in Washington with US Assistant Secretary of State Wendy Sherman may have caused the Foreign Office to deny that he had any official sanction, but it did not explain why he was accompanied by Pakistan’s Ambassador to the USA. Mr Fatemi, a career diplomat, spent his retirement getting close to Nawaz Sharif, and he was his SAPM in his final term. He had to resign because of the DawnLeaks scandal, and the same circles objected again when he was inducted on his old job, this time by Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, when the PML(N) came back to office. He was retained as SAPM, but without portfolio. However, it seems as if the hankering after old glory was too much to resist, and he converted an essentially private trip into a last hurrah.
While his playing at diplomacy might offend certain powerful quarters still smarting over the DawnLeaks episode, his activity might be seen as the Prime Minister’s attempt to sneak his own man into the Foreign Affairs arena, which he had handed over to the PPP, which has got both minister and minister of state there, in party Chairman Bilawal Zardari-Bhutto and Hina Rabbani Khar. They have proved competent, and have proved loyal Cabinet members though belonging to a different party. It is not as if they have been running a foreign policy of their own, undercutting the Prime Minister; nor have they shown the sort of incompetence or inability to handle matters that makes an experienced hand needed at the tiller.
In the middle of the tremendous crises posed by the tanking of the economy and the loss of the Punjab government, the Prime Minister does not need a needless one that Mr Fatemi seems bent on causing. The greatest danger he could face at the moment is to let matters drag on. Mr Fatemi may be a superb diplomat, but his skills might be overwhelmed by anger both from those who blocked his reappointment and by those who are doing well enough without him.
