The Pakistani Army has denied that its chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa asked his officers to emulate the values of Indian democracy.
"news/comments quoting COAS' (chief of army staff's) address to officers at Rawalpindi regarding book 'Army and Nation' is a disinformation," Major General Asif Ghafoor, spokesman of the Pakistan armed forces, tweeted on Sunday.
The tweet is tagged with General Bajwa's photograph and it has an incomplete caption that reads 'Army officers should learn from Indian democracy, says Pakistan army chief Qamar J...' .
Asif Ghafoor’s tweet looks like a poor damage control act after Gen Bajwa's vision for the Pakistani army was widely reported in the Indian media.
On February 13, Pakistani newspaper The Nation had published an article on the new Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa's vision for the Pakistan's Army based on quotes from his first official address to his colleagues in December 2016.
The article titled 'Coordination, not competition, with civilians: The Army Chief's Glasnost', quoted the Army chief as saying something that was so unlike the Pakistani army's position that it caught immediate international attention.
According to this article, General Bajwa conveyed to his colleagues that the Pakistan Army should learn from India by remaining within the constitutional role defined for it and that it must not meddle in the civilian government.
