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Going beyond phone conversation

Ziauddin Choudhury
These days some of the most highly watched TV programmes in the US are called reality shows. People from ordinary walks of life are preselected to take part in adventures, challenging events, or just living daily lives and doing normal chores. Unfortunately, most people do not know that many of these “ordinary folks" are actors and the chores that they go through are scripted and contrived to achieve a certain entertainment value.
The famous phone conversation between our two political leaders last week cannot be compared with a scripted reality show, but the amount of interest, controversy and debate that it generated in the media and general public is nothing less than in a TV reality show. In fact, in many respects, this is more than a reality show because TV shows reflect a make believe world, the phone conversation is about real issues, real lives, real people, but above all future of the country. It was supposed to break the ice that had been preventing a dialogue between the two leaders on issues surrounding the next general election, and pave the way for removing the thorny differences between their two parties, if not between them.
The phone conversation was much awaited since government party leaders had been forecasting it days before it actually took place. Alas, it happened on the brink of a three-day strike announced by the opposition. What we heard was a litany of recriminations, accusations and counter-accusations about perpetration of wrongs by one against the other, and obstinate sticking to respective positions.
Much of the conversation that lasted two thirds of an hour was occupied by complaints from the two sides that ranged from government's negligence to repair the opposition leader's government phone to allegations of government's disingenuousness in offering invitation to a dialogue, to exchanges of who did what to whom in the past. The exchanges may not have been balanced in tone from both sides, with one being more aggressive than the other; but the content did show that relation between the two leaders is anything but harmonious.
The conversation, touted as the first between them in two decades, is a micro representation of the public utterances against one another.
Has the phone conversation been able to show a new path despite the negative image that it portrays about two protagonists of our country? Does it show a change in the mindset of the two leaders that could lead eventually to a rational discussion to end the looming crisis over next elections? Or do we take it as a scripted event of a reality TV show?
Politics and disingenuousness may sometimes go hand in hand; but statesmanship and untruthfulness do not mix. Nations have many politicians, but few statesmen. The crisis that our country faces now requires skills of a statesman to lift it out of the morass it is now, not the narrowness of partisan politics. Despite the partisan bickering and crowing by respective political parties over who was right and who was wrong in last week's phone conversation, there is great promise in that event. There is hope that if the two leaders want they can have a conversation, they can sit down, and perhaps find common grounds to prevent a crisis. There is a smidgeon of a chance that they can even agree, but only if they continue their dialogue.
Despite public display of great hostility between the two major parties in the country, despite vaunted claims of ideological differences between parties, the real difference between them boils down to willingness of the parties to accept the rule of one over the other. That is why the election results favouring one party against the other are not accepted, that is why the party in opposition fears that elections under the ruling party will be manipulated. That is why the demand for a neutral government, although I am not sure if the results under a neutral government will be accepted calmly by the losing party.
We need to go beyond our obsession with what went wrong or what went right with the phone conversation of the two leaders. Our leaders need to seize the opportunity of a thaw in the relationship and take immediate steps to further the dialogue to end the looming crisis. Threats of closure of the country by seizing the cities and stopping all economic activities for days together are not substitutes for political dialogue.
It is ironic that in their conversation both leaders asserted that they were upholding people's rights by sticking to their side of the argument, yet they support actions that deprive people of their rights to carry on with daily activities. Political leaders rise and fall through their actions, not by speeches. If our leaders truly believe in what they say, such as standing for people's rights, they need to act on their promises. The only way this can happen is by resolving the differences through dialogue and not violence.
Negotiations are not a one-way street; you give some to win some. Dialogues are also negotiations, and these can happen only when two sides agree. The nation deserves at least a further continuation of this dialogue to end the crisis. We do not see the phone conversation as scripted, but real. The leaders need to go beyond that. There is not much time left.
The writer is a US based political analyst and commentator.