THE Pakistani parliament is known for ‘maintaining’ its distance with other organs and organisations of the state. It has had its issues with the military. In the recent past, prime ministers have been found vainly asserting their authority against what they saw as the excesses of the courts. And now, it has befallen on the experienced shoulders of the prime minister’s adviser Sartaj Aziz to distinguish the Foreign Office’s right from the Pakistani parliament’s privilege.

But the dilemma Aziz and others like Chaudhry Nisar are faced with is much bigger, of finding the right, politically profitable balance. They may not want to be disrespectful of one country’s sovereignty, but more importantly they do not want to insult a man who ‘we’ had used to perpetuate our ideology 40 years ago and who, posthumously, had the potential of earning their political rivals some crucial points.

That is the reality in a country where the Jamaat-i-Islami still celebrates those accused of committing atrocities in then East Pakistan as its heroes, forcing some other parties to do the same. Forty-two years later gains are still to be made by suppression of truth that has been confirmed most tellingly by soldiers sent over from West Pakistan.

Pakistanis’ inability to come to terms with facts is best summed up by their feigned ignorance of the contents of the Hamoodur Rehman Commission report whose findings were kept under wraps for decades.

Hypocrisy is too small a word to describe this Pakistani attitude. Political parties have been making minor adjustments in their positions depending on whether they were in power or in the opposition. And despite some voices from within calling on Pakistan to apologise unconditionally, the country is sadly unrepentant of the devastating war crimes in the then East Pakistan.

An apology has not been forthcoming, from the parties which got passed that resolution in the National Assembly last Monday, and from those who have been in power in the recent past: PPP, ANP, MQM. A decade after Pervez Musharraf offered regrets to Bangladesh, Pakistan still lacks the courage to say sorry for its crimes.

In the Senate last Wednesday, Aziz said parliament was sovereign and held the authority to pass a resolution regarding Bangladesh Jamaat-i-Islami’s executed leader Abdul Quader Mollah. But he pointed out that the Foreign Office had stated that Mollah’s execution was an internal issue of Bangladesh.

Aziz said “after 1971 it was agreed between both the countries that they would let bygones be bygones”.

The last remark by Aziz echoed what Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, the interior minister, had said while wrapping up his argument about the resolution in National Assembly about Mollah two days earlier. Only, Aziz, even when he was trying to control the damage, had applied a more definite tone by revealing that Pakistan and Bangladesh had some kind of an accord that bound them to not look back on events from the period when the two of them were one country.

Nisar, too, had called on Bangladesh to forget the atrocities that have been confirmed by soldiers sent over by West Pakistan. As for himself and for the Jamaat-i-Islami or the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, none of them were prepared to let pass Mollah’s execution without protest.

“The whole nation is feeling sad over this tragic incident. A person who was the flag-bearer of a united Pakistan was executed through judicial murder,” the interior minister said. He declared that ‘Abdul Quader Mollah’s martyrdom had reopened the wounds of 1971 when the country had broken into two parts’.

The Sartaj Aziz statement about the Foreign Office being the relevant authority for an official reaction to Mollah’s execution was in reply to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajid’s condemnation of the Pakistani parliament’s resolution. That was what she was expected to do as the chief executive of her country.

SUBDUED RESPONSE: Politically, however, her erstwhile Pakistani brethren appeared to bail her out of the tight spot she had landed in by presiding over Mollah’s execution. With one resolution, Pakistan had turned an internal matter of Bangladesh into an issue between the oppressed and the oppressor.

Frankly, the reaction in Dhaka so far has been surprisingly subdued. The issue could have been, can be, exploited much more blatantly for gains that anti-Pakistan emotion can bring for a political party in Bangladesh.