TALK of sending the wrong signals. No one would accuse Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz of excessive charisma. If there was a prize for appearing consistently wooden in public he’d get it. But even if charisma-on-demand is not to be had, is it too out-of-place to suggest that he hang up his designer suits for the duration of earthquake relief?

Clothes and looks should suit the occasion. When people are freezing on the mountains and walking miles to get something to eat, it is only sensible for ministers and other officials to dress down a bit rather than dress up. Indeed, if there was any sense in the cabinet, they would stop wearing ties altogether during this time of crisis. Distress on this scale and unabashed designer clothing: give us a break.

And the plush setting of meetings presided over by the president and prime minister. From the pictures of such meetings and the interior dicor to be seen there, who would think this was a country in urgent need of aid and assistance?

Between now and November 19 when the international donors’ conference takes place in Islamabad, we better get serious ourselves and look like a nation in crisis if we want the world to take us seriously.

If one reason for getting less aid than we should is the parsimony of the international community — long on sympathy, somewhat short on actual money given — another is the incomprehensible complacency of our own government which kept downplaying the scale of the disaster as it unfolded. When we should have been ringing the alarm bells we didn’t and it was the United Nations which did our job for us.

Government and military can say what they like now, but opinion in Pakistan is near-unanimous that they were slow to wake up to the extent of the disaster.

Be that as it may, regardless of what happens at the donors’ conference — whether the international community is generous or not — ultimately this is our crisis which we have to manage ourselves. We have to put our own house in order — no one else is going to do it for us — and harness our own resources for relief and rehabilitation. No amount of donors’ conferences can be an excuse for putting aside this agenda.

It is in this context that the decision to put on hold the F-16 deal with the United States has been so welcomed across the country. It shows the military government in a good light: responding to public opinion. Putting on hold, however, is not enough. If anything deserves outright cancellation it is this piece of folly. A four-to-five billion dollar deal for any number of F-16s is a luxury Pakistan could not afford at the best of times. It makes no sense at all now.

But what about the Swedish deal for six flying turkeys (an early warning system involving six SAAB aircraft) at a cost of around a billion dollars which was signed, believe it or not, after the earthquake? This is a foolish transaction concluded at a strange time and it definitely calls for second thoughts. Incidentally, why is the defence ministry mum over it? Surely the public deserves an explanation.

Must we match India in every defence particular? India is getting an airborne early warning system from Israel. Must we have one too? The nation was led to believe its nuke capability provided insurance against Indian superiority in conventional arms. Nukes enabling cuts to be made in conventional defence spending makes sense. But along with possession of nukes allowing ourselves to be bled dry by a tit-for-tat arms race makes little sense. The SAAB deal therefore sucks. It too should head for the chopping block. Sweden, which puts such great store by its humanitarian record, should not mind.

What’s leadership? Sensing the national mood and pointing the way. It doesn’t mean being out of step with the national mood, with no finger on the national pulse, and therefore in no position to mobilize popular feelings and lead the nation. Good horsemanship comes when horse and rider are one, good music when instrument and player are one. Break this unity and the result is discord.

There was a new mood in the air when people responded to the earthquake. The challenge before the nation was/is to keep this spirit alive, to replace despondency and cynicism, of which we have more than our share, with courage and hope. But the jokers or cardboard figures you see in Islamabad are not going to do this, only a dispensation drawing strength from the people. But with such a dispensation scarcely visible on the horizon, don’t be surprised if the spirit of 2005 proves as fleeting as the spirit of 1965 when Pakistan went to war with India.

A leadership more in tune with the national mood would not have waited for criticism to mount before postponing the F-16 deal. A leadership more alive to its responsibilities would not have inked the SAAB deal at a time when after-shocks from the earthquake were still taking place. And such a leadership would not be so hung up on building a new army headquarters (GHQ) in Islamabad. Why this project should become a matter of prestige for the military leadership defies common sense.

The leadership should be ahead of the national mood, not trailing behind it. There is no public support for a new GHQ in Islamabad, people at large unable to see the justification for it, especially when the present GHQ in Rawalpindi is pretty good and sufficient for all genuine needs. The military would be doing itself a favour if this project was cancelled and the money saved put to better use.

Field Marshal Ayub Khan built a new capital for himself in Islamabad which may be a good place for its denizens but which has brought nothing but harm to Pakistan. Looking back, Pakistan’s more serious problems arose when Islamabad became the national capital: the ‘65 war, the alienation of East Pakistan, the Yahya Khan interlude and the breakup of Pakistan, the failure of democracy, the rise and consolidation of military authoritarianism.

The people of East Pakistan could relate to Karachi with its cosmopolitan feel and outlook. Islamabad in distant Potohar was quite foreign to them. Of all the factors which played a role in distancing East and West Pakistan, this was one, and by no means the least important. Among the other consequences of this move, Karachi, the city of lights and one of the pearls of the Orient — in its heyday rivalling Bombay and Singapore — became a crumbling backwater. Its political problems — no need to spell them out here — are a direct consequence of its diminished status.

Doesn’t this tell us we should be cautious about new projects? The legacy of Islamabad speaks for itself. Let’s not wait and see what the legacy of a new GHQ may turn out to be. As it is, democracy, or whatever is left of it, faces serious breathing problems in Pakistan. Let’s not make them worse by parking GHQ within the capital.

On a slightly different note, is there no one who can educate Pervaiz Elahi — for sins yet unrecorded, Punjab’s photo ops chief minister — about the evil that will flow from his New Murree Project: the destruction of what’s left of the Murree hills? Pervaiz as Punjab gauleiter is bad enough. As overlord of the province’s threatened habitat, he is nothing short of calamitous.

Strange, is it not, in other climes ‘new’ denotes progress, a movement towards the light. With us it signifies regression, an about-turn into the dark: New Murree, new GHQ, new capital, new this, new that, when we are hardpressed to manage the old.