LAST week, former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi displayed a fine response to the call of his conscience. Speaking one's mind is a rarity in a system that thrives on secrecy and subservience.

Since then Mr Qureshi has reaped a rich harvest of public praise of the sort he was denied when he was in charge of the country's foreign affairs. Then, despite having a massive PR machinery at his disposal and the ability to command the direction of the cameras, he was a marginal man in terms of public popularity on a national scale.

Now parallels are being drawn between Mr Qureshi and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the country's late charismatic prime minister, whose sizzling rhetoric on foreign affairs was as popular as the commanding heights of his understanding of world politics. Mr Qureshi should find such comparisons flattering. But this is where the matter should end. One press conference, no matter how passionate and energising, does not make a national leader.

Without taking anything away from Mr Qureshi, who so far has stayed clear of the pond of corruption that some of his colleagues have been happily diving in, he has not articulated a new vision for the country's foreign policy, much less shown how to redefine Pakistan's strategic ties with the US.

The fantastic talk of national honour and walking with one's head held high is heartwarming, but falls hopelessly short of a new world view. Let alone that, it does not even constitute an honest answer to the fundamental question as to where Pakistan has gone wrong in its engagement with Washington.

The Raymond Davis case, on which Mr Qureshi has struck a politically suicidal but personally redeeming note, is symbolic of the broader context in which Pakistan has chosen to ally itself with Washington. Davis is not the problem, but a gross symptom of the problem that can be called harsh TORs (terms of reference) within which Islamabad finds itself in dealing with the US.

These TORs, restrictive of the country's sovereignty and debilitating for its dignity, are wrapped in secrecy and sealed with silence. No one dares to open up on them. They have spawned an underground of operators like Davis who have unfettered territory for murderous operations in Pakistan until such time, of course, when they blow their own cover and get caught, literally in his case, with a smoking gun. pirs

How exactly has this underworld come about and how vast and widespread it is are queries on which the out-of-cabinet, out-in-the-cold former foreign minister could have informed the people of Pakistan, but chose not to. In fact, all bets are that he would never do that. Haloed never rock the boat. Unassuming fakirs do.

Mr Qureshi is not going to upstage his goodwill with Washington's powerbrokers by crossing the fine line that divides US friends from foes, which, these days, includes everyone who dares ask an even remotely probing question about the US role in Pakistan.

Moreover, he himself has been an indefatigable defender of deepening the very type of ties with the US, whose one manifestation he now finds unbearable. (It is amazing that the procedural matter of disclosing Davis's real status has become one that can both shape and destroy political careers. This can only happen in Pakistan.)

Many of the challenges facing Pakistan in its relations with the US are mentioned in a detailed fashion in the Kerry Lugar Bill whose most energetic advocate was Mr Qureshi himself.

When almost everyone expressed deep worries over the growing drone strikes and the unlimited access that US officials, from lowly counsellor to intelligence operatives, had to Pakistan's entire leadership, Mr Qureshi did not raise the red flag. In fact on his watch Ms Hillary Clinton held a school headmistress-like briefing in the Foreign Office, complete with charts, chalk and coloured pencils on the great things that the US was doing for Pakistan.

The visitor was allowed any number of opportunities to have dialogue with 'the people of Pakistan' — which comprised people the US embassy here handpicked — in what really was a brazen attempt at bypassing official channels to conduct US public diplomacy. These — there are many more — are concessions that Islamabad has made on every step of its way forward with the US in the last many years, and whose grimmest consequence is the present gridlock over Raymond Davis.

Of course, in Mr Qureshi's defence it can said that he was reflecting on a consensus that the Pakistani government had crafted on its dealings with the US and the policy that he endorsed was not reflective of his personal preferences. This would be largely true. However, in the absence of any real information on what Mr Qureshi's actual preferences are, one can be forgiven for believing that the margin of difference is rather slim in his personal and private choice of the type of relations Pakistan should have with the US.

Mr Qureshi has spoken well, and with exquisite timing, which is ninth-tenth of politics. He has raised his profile and has added to his political stock. Now he needs to fill the gaping hole of information not about the status of Davis, but what in his view is the alternative to the present relationship of dependency Pakistan has developed with the US.

Until we hear Mr Qureshi speak on that subject, his coronation as a possible king of hope in Pakistan must be held back. In a land of false messiahs and pretenders, such caution is called for.

The writer is senior anchor at DawnNews.