If you live in the subcontinent, you will understand that apart from being a hub of extremist terrorism, Pakistan is also a funny country. Top Pakistani Ministers and journalists often end up embarrassing the Islamic Republic before the world. And even Pakistani diplomats are not suave and reasonable, unlike other diplomats. They do things like sharing a picture of a Palestinian girl before the UN and passing them off as a picture of a Kashmiri girl.
Now, even Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has slammed his colonial-era diplomats. He made a sharp comparison between Indian and Pakistani envoys, whole asking Pakistani diplomats to shed their colonial-era attitude.
It is not as if Imran Khan is not responsible for putting Pakistan in a pitiable condition. The Pakistani Prime Minister has presided over a dramatic downturn in the Pakistani economy. Pakistan’s GDP growth shows no signs of picking up, while dangerous trends like rise in debt obligations and inflationary pressure keep going up. Khan himself was criticising Pakistani envoys over their failure to bring in foreign investment.
Khan said, “We cannot continue like this. The way our embassies are running, this could work in an old colonial system but not in today’s Pakistan. Embassies’ foremost work is to service the diaspora and then they should work to bring investment into the country that is going through very bad financial conditions right now.”
The Pakistani Prime Minister also lamented that Indian Embassies abroad were “very proactive” in bringing investments to India, as compared to Pakistani embassies.
Pakistani diplomats are infested with a feudalistic mindset, just like any other Pakistani bureaucrat or person in authority. They are often found abusing their position, and as such Pakistani envoys neither look after their diaspora nor do they try to attract investments for their nation.
Only recently, the Pakistani government launched an inquiry into allegations of mistreatment against Pakistani embassy staff in Riyadh by certain Pakistani workers settled in Saudi Arabia.
A letter from Pakistan PM’s office read, “The former ambassador to (the) KSA, Raja Ali Ejaz, has been suspended, while all staff who dealt with the public at the Pakistani Embassy and consulates in (the) KSA, (are) to be recalled and the process for their replacement initiated immediately by the concerned ministries.”
At a time, when Pakistan PM is literally down to begging for foreign aid and investments, the stubborn and elitist attitude of Pakistani diplomats is simply not helping. A frustrated and desperate Imran Khan, thus, felt compelled to draw a comparison between India’s adroit envoys and the clumsy Pakistani ambassadors.