PM’s task

Published July 24, 2016

AFTER weeks — months, really — of speculation, it was a reassuring signal: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif chairing a meeting of the National Security Committee, with the country’s military leadership and senior cabinet officials in attendance. A trip to Muzaffarabad to address a post-election rally also suggested that Mr Sharif is regaining the stamina necessary for the demanding job of leading this country. An elected prime minister attending to his duties of governance and policymaking is the right kind of disinfectant for the noxious rumours and thinly veiled assaults on the democratic process that have been unleashed in recent times. Clearly, the PML-N has contributed to the recent climate of political uncertainty through its unwillingness to share timely and clear information with the public and its over-willingness to attack political rivals. Perhaps now Mr Sharif will be able to impose some discipline on his party and reinvigorate his cabinet to focus on the task of governance.

Unquestionably, this country needs democratic leadership in all spheres, domestic and foreign. The PML-N has electoral legitimacy, but has struggled to impose its political and wider democratic legitimacy. Political legitimacy will receive a boost once the PML-N finds a way to create a nationally endorsed judicial commission to investigate the revelations in the Panama Papers. It is not simply a question of the political opposition demonstrating the will and capacity to sustain its anti-government protests. The Panama Papers raised some important concerns about the finances of the first family and until those are addressed fully and transparently before an authentically independent and powerful commission, it is the Sharif family itself that must bear primary responsibility for the simmering political crisis. Certainly, there is also an onus on the opposition politicians to seek a fair outcome, but few, if any, of the opposition demands thus far have been fundamentally undemocratic or unjust. Mr Sharif must find a way to break the impasse soon.

Wider political legitimacy will come from the government recovering the space it has surrendered to other institutions in its first three years. That process can only begin if the government is willing to reactivate and re-energise the various constitutional and administrative forums that have become dormant under the PML-N. A National Security Committee after a prolonged absence of the prime minister from the country can send the right signal, but it will mean little in the medium term unless two other questions are also answered. Does the PML-N intend to hold regular NSC meetings? Will it approach such meetings in a structured manner and contribute meaningfully to both the agenda for such meetings and the substance of the discussions? Be it the CCI or the NSC, Mr Sharif must embrace institutional forms of decision-making. If not, the trends established in the first three years of this administration will continue over its last two.

Published in Dawn, July 24th, 2016

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