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WHAT is the best-case scenario for Nawaz Sharif’s government? That it might just survive PTI’s onslaught? Sums up the dilemma of those who believe that nothing except continuity of the political process will instil sustainable change in Pakistan. Many of those opposed to mid-term polls and extra-constitutional or extraordinary regime changes are wondering if the Sharif government will be left with any room for policymaking and governance even if it manages to limp along in its incapacitated state.
The best time to initiate policy reform is during the post-election honeymoon period they say. With a freshly harvested mandate, with needs of political expediency still at bay and with no urgent need to rally core constituency, this period affords the required political space to take unpopular decisions. Once this window closes it becomes harder to pursue tough agendas. Can a crisis cultivate the urge within a status quo PML-N to experiment with new ideas? Will survival instinct heighten the prime minister’s focus on conservation or change?
The personal challenge for Sharif is two-fold. One, the policy space left with him as a civilian prime minister has shrunk drastically (he’s already pulled all favours with the khakis as well as his competitors in parliament). And two, faced with PTI animus and public angst, he would be tempted to recede to the comfort of being surrounded with sycophants as opposed to reaching out to critics. The first threatens to reduce him to a lame duck in the first quarter of his term, the second to isolate him further and accelerate his downward spiral.
Nawaz Sharif comes across as a distant potentate who can’t be bothered to fight for anything.
What compounds this conundrum is that Sharif comes across as a distant potentate who can’t be bothered to fight for anything, including his own position. We’ve heard all kinds of accusations hurled at him during the last couple of months and he won’t respond. We’ve heard his acts and omissions as prime minister being censured, from atop containers and from within parliament that stood behind him, and he won’t respond. Nawaz Sharif exhibits an inexplicable lack of urgency to review and revise the direction in which his government is headed.
Does he feel no need to reassure people that he is all there and alive to the war-like situation in which his government continues to exist without functioning? Does he feel no need to buoy up his supporters and convince fence-sitters that he has the wherewithal to pull his government out of the mess it has landed itself in as well as a thought-out plan to do so? Does he not realise that the sentiment unleashed by PTI (even if inadvertently) is now fixated on the abusive relationship between our political class and our society and not just the issue of rigging?
It is no longer sufficient for Sharif to address the six-point agenda flagged by PTI. The basis of PTI’s support is an amorphous message of hope and change linked to the person of Imran Khan combined with rancour for an opulent, distant, corrupt and ineffectual ruling elite presently symbolised by traditional politicos like Sharif. To break free of this unflattering narrative gaining momentum, Sharif will need to respond with a plan that is both substantive and symbolic. He will have to establish through actions that he is not the caricature he is being made out to be.
The demand for Abdul Qadir Gilani’s arrest for the very unfortunate killing of the innocent Tahir Malik by a private guard, without first verifying Gilani’s role in this tragedy, is another manifestation of the national mood. Public tolerance for the sense of entitlement of our power elites’ offspring and the abuse of authority and privilege by them has run out. In this context, they loathe Mariam Nawaz and Hamza Shahbaz lording over state resources and Hussain Nawaz and Salman Shahbaz building business empires under state patronage.
On the symbolic front, Nawaz Sharif needs to let his family members disappear into the shadows away from public eye. Musharraf might have been an illegitimate ruler, but one never heard of his son’s involvement in lucrative business deals between Pakistan and other countries. It is rumours such as those about Hussain Nawaz or Salman Shahbaz travelling with government teams exploring business deals with friendly countries that lend credence to accusations that the PML-N government’s style may be different, but it is no less corrupt than its maligned predecessor.
Had Shahbaz Sharif not been the brother (and only a party loyalist like Rana Sanaullah), wouldn’t he have been asked to quit after Model Town? Is Ishaq Dar just another minister who can be sacked if he messes up the country’s finances? Relationship with family, especially in our culture, is complicated. Shahbaz, Dar, Mariam and Hamza must be great people. But family and politics don’t mix well, just like politics and religion. If there is little distinction between the prime minister’s family and PML-N’s core ruling team, are we a democracy or a hereditary plutocracy?
Pakistan is a big country with no dearth of bright people. The cabinet must reflect such diversity and merit with portfolios matching expertise as opposed to reflecting the fears and insecurities of the prime minister. Can one think of another democracy without full-time defence, law and foreign ministers? And a cabinet reshuffle will no longer cut it. It needs a makeover reflecting reordered priorities: fully empowered ministers; visible focus on key policy issues such as energy, national security, local governance and education, due representation of federating units.
Sharif often comes across as someone deliberately dragging his feet just to get fired, either because he thinks his job is too much work or because he is bored out of his mind. If the impression is false, he should tell people that. And what he will do to improve the lives of Pakistanis, in what time frame and how. Political rhetoric and regime change are no solution to Pakistan’s ills. But neither is a dysfunctional regime relying on miracles. Pakistan is changing. And if Nawaz Sharif refuses to reinvent himself, it won’t be Imran Khan but he himself responsible for his undoing.
The writer is a lawyer.
Twitter: @babar_sattar
Published in Dawn, October 13th, 2014
