Nowhere from Lahore

Published August 18, 2017
The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.
The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

THE onlooker cannot figure out what lies ahead in the politics that has got stuck up in Lahore. The serious part is that it is being said that the man with the initiative — Mian Nawaz Sharif — is as clueless about what to do next as is the confused lot that had attached so much promise to his grand homecoming last week.

The punch has gone out of the speech. The declaration that Mian Sahib was to come up with on Aug 14 has failed to materialise. What’s worse, he is seen to have reneged on the plan under pressure from two main political parties which are opposing his PML-N.

At the conclusion of his rally in Lahore on Saturday, the sacked prime minister had vowed to come up with a plan of action on Aug 14. His supporters had expected that the plan would be commensurate with the occasion, it being the 70th anniversary of independence. He had made it quite clear in his final rally speech at Data Darbar that he was aiming for changes in the Constitution — to save future elected and duly mandated prime ministers from having to suffer the same ignominious dismissal by a group of five men. All signs indicated that the plan came crashing down in the wake of politics by the PTI and PPP.

The punch has gone out of the speech. The declaration that Mian Sahib was to come up with on Aug 14 has failed to materialise.

Imran Khan responded to the Nawaz Sharif road map to future safety for prime ministers by standing categorically by Articles 62 and 63, in addition to pledging his support for the army and the judiciary, the two organisations he clearly believes can help his cause for reform in the country. He was quite liberal in enunciating his views which were obviously focused on consolidating the gains following the Nawaz Sharif dismissal. Imran sounded particularly upset at Nawaz’s attempt to steal the term ‘revolution’ from the PTI vocabulary, and reminded his rival that he was capable of taking out processions much larger than were part of the Nawaz homecoming ceremony to thwart any PML-N designs on the Constitution.

If the PTI chief’s riposte to Nawaz’s rather delayed declaration of revolution was expected, one-time ally PPP chose the days immediately following the GT Road homecoming to sharpen its knives. Both Asif Ali Zardari and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari betray a kind of hurt when they reject all possibility of joining hands with the PML-N — even establishing contact with the party — in the given circumstances. Apart from the current compulsions of power politics, the father-son attitude is quickly linked to a not-too-old instance where the duo reportedly failed to get an appointment for a meeting with the Sharifs in Raiwind despite encamping in Lahore for many days. The Zardari emphasis is on how he was not even ready to receive a telephone call from the disqualified prime minister’s side.

With the two-man leadership finally managing to speak with so much contempt about the PML-N, it was all but natural for Senate chairman Raza Rabbani to pour cold water over the as yet tentative Nawaz scheme of bringing about a revolution through constitutional change by parliament. This was a snub from a party he needed to bank heavily on for a parliamentary revolution, and it apparently left Nawaz with little to reveal on Independence Day.

They say that in this angry mood, Nawaz was quite capable of botching it on his own without help from the formerly pliable PPP. The impression that he had been made to cancel his Aug 14 announcement under pressure from not just the PTI but also a PPP not considered as strong as it used to be was shocking. It was a setback that vindicated talk about the PML-N protest being without direction and objectives. There was no doubt that the PML-N had a large number of people at its disposal, which made its inability to channel this popular resource into some kind of coherent, meaningful stream towards an achievable end all the more jarring.

It didn’t help when the same ‘half-hearted’ approach was used to deal with some other urgent matters the PML-N or the house of Sharifs was faced with. The party did finally manage to locate the right person within the family to contest the NA-120 by-election but the delay in deciding how best it wanted to employ the crucial talent of Shahbaz Sharif led to much speculation. This was a recipe for trouble at a time when a simple Shahbaz act of taking his granddaughter for Independence Day souvenirs was dubbed by some as a commitment to and investment in his own future away from the looming shadow of his elder brother.

It did make the rumour mill build a new PML faction when Shahbaz was first selected and then dropped as Nawaz’s candidate for NA-120. Next the talk that PML-N was having second thoughts about putting Shahbaz in charge of the party generously fed the strain that forecast an early and sudden breakup of the party. It is being openly said in Lahore that the split is only a matter of time, with the alternative account of the future also conjuring up not so cheerful scenarios for the party which is inseparable from the family.

The alternative account is based on the understanding that if Nawaz is there facing the axe Shahbaz cannot be far behind. Without the eventual focus of the change of Shahbaz the purge that has unmasked the whole family irredeemably in the opposition version of events will not be complete. This train of thought also brings into the equation a more charitable, pro-Sharif unity explanation about the reluctance to Shahbaz Sharif being given an even more prominent post to fight the onslaught aimed at debilitating the PML-N.

A more prominent role would attract intensified attacks on Shahbaz at a crucial juncture when he needs to concentrate his energies on finding new ways of survival and new patrons to bank on. Until there is more convincing evidence to suggest otherwise it can perhaps be presumed — or hoped or suspected depending on where you stand — that both Shahbaz and Nawaz are working for the same party.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

Published in Dawn, August 18th, 2017

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