Pak minister's disclosure on Kartarpur exposes elemental dysfunctionality:EFSAS think tank

A European think tank has said that Pakistan Railway Minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmad's statement on the Kartarpur corridor exposes the elemental dysfunctionality of the country's government. The think tank also said that it justifies the hollow and distorted nature of its democracy. A statement released by Amsterdam-based European Foundation for South Asian Studies (EFSAS) on Friday stated that Rasheed's disclosure that the corridor was the brainchild of Pakistan Army Chief Qamar Javed Bajwa confirms that the country's Prime Minister Imran Khan is "firmly under the thumb of the authority that 'selected' him".

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European Foundation for South Asian Studies statement on Pakistan

"The perversity of the dynamics of governance in Pakistan was laid starkly bare by Rasheed. What he implicitly confirmed through his statement was the widely held view in Pakistan that Imran Khan was a 'selected' (as opposed to elected) Prime Minister who was firmly under the thumb of the authority that 'selected' him, the Army Chief, and that Khan was merely a rubber stamp for the decisions that the Army Chief dictated to him. It could have been more understandable if the statement made by Rasheed came from a man in uniform," the statement read.

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"However, for an elected representative, a Federal Minister, and a close aide of the Prime Minister, to credit, without batting an eyelid, the Army Chief and not his boss, the Prime Minister, for the most meaningful decision taken in recent times to improve relations with India, speaks volumes about the nature and scope of dysfunction in the Pakistani State, as also about how hollow and distorted its 'democracy' is," it added.

In addition, EFSAS further said that the statement irresponsibly blended matters of security and politics into what was essentially an issue of religious faith for millions of Sikhs. The think tank deemed the minister's suggestion that Pakistan had won over the Indian Sikh community by opening the corridor as "provocative" and "mischievous".

"As per figures released by the Pakistani government's National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), there were a mere 6,146 Sikhs registered in Pakistan in 2012. This figure has seen an upward revision since, but nowhere near enough to suggest that Sikhs constitute anywhere close to even 1 per cent of the Pakistani population," the statement read.

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"Sikhs, therefore, are a fringe group in the Pakistani scheme of things, one that should possess neither the clout nor any intention to take up any Sikh cause larger than their own survival as a minuscule minority in Pakistan, especially given the country's abysmal record in the treatment of its minorities," it added.

EFSAS further said that the minister's statement also implies that Pakistan has chosen to disregard the reality that the idea of Khalistan today is not welcomed and in essence, has robbed the country of the higher ground that it could have stood on after unilaterally offering and subsequently providing its territory to Indian pilgrims despite the tensed strains in bilateral relations. 

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(With ANI Inputs)