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The return of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif to Pakistan has not generally been welcomed by masses as they keep buzzing the social media with interesting but logical quotes like “no one knows the exact date of general elections, but everyone knows who is the next PM”, or “Selection before elections is a norm not an exception”.
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| Former PM promoting peace to move forward |
Amidst a chaotic political spectrum ever since the breaking of love-bondage between Imran Khan and the powerful military establishment in April 2022, return of court-convicted Nawaz Sharif from his self-imposed exile in London hinged mainly on Generals and partially on judiciary, and his personal safety.
Despite having a Constitution, an apparently functional judicial set up and an Election Commission, no one in the country knows when the next general elections will be held after dissolution of National Assembly in August 2023. Purportedly, the Constitution of the country claims that General Elections should be held within 90 days of dissolution of the assembly but the Independent Judiciary is busy defining the “hidden” meanings of the Constitutional ambiguous language. Election Commission is another Constitutionally Independent institution and is too busy to clarify the mist by claiming that they are working out the modalities to hold elections in the country.
Technically, Nawaz Sharif is an absconder in the eyes of Pakistani law (or at least he was until he decided to use a private jet to leave his controversial London Avenfield apartments). Yet, the rolling cameras showed that he received the protocol of a Prime Minister in waiting. All doors were opened for him, all courtesies were extended to him and it was nothing short of a red-carpet welcome. Even the courts, which were hostile to him and ousted him in what was dubbed as a judicial coup by Nawaz-camp in 2017, were ready to accommodate his ‘honourable’ return.
With Nawaz’s come back, on October 21, to some extent has categorically given the impression that he is going to be the next prime minister of Pakistan for the fourth and perhaps last time as he is once again the Army’s chosen one to take on his bete noire Imran Khan.
On the other hand, it is still believed in one quarter of society that, if Imran Khan is allowed a free hand in the forthcoming general elections, he would sweep the polls. In a recent Gallup survey, Imran soars over Nawaz in popularity and going by that account PTI would leave PML-N biting the dust.
However, erstwhile kingmakers seems to have found a magic potion from their storage facility to wipe off this ‘so-called’ Gallups and opinion polls by introducing Nawaz Sharif in a brand new packing.
Interestingly, there is no national reconciliation order this time because this engineered potion is helping the courts to see the new writings on the wall more clearly than ever before. The “Engineers” seems to have also collected flotsam and jetsam of PTI deserters—commonly known as ‘electables’- and corralled them together into the Istehkam-e-Pakistan Party (IPP) in Punjab and PTI-Parliamentarians in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (K-P). Both these new parties led by two of Imran Khan’s closest lieutenants, Jehangir Tareen (once known as ATM of Imran Khan) and Pervez Khattak respectively. Both these parties are expected to fragment the verdict in a way that they would let the engineers ensure and to some extent hold the balance of power in the centre, Punjab and K-P.
Though the country’s military establishment (often called deep state on social media discussion forums) appears reconciled to seeing Nawaz Sharif back in the saddle by making all such arrangements but it remains a fact that it doesn’t trust him beyond a certain line and do not want him to go rogue once again and try to put the army in its rightful place. After all, in all his three previous innings, Nawaz Sharif was ousted because he got into a scrap with the Generals. His relations with all the Army chiefs he dealt with -- especially those he appointed himself -- have also always been strained. Nawaz has the habit of calling the shots and that s exactly what pits him against the military, which isn’t ready to submit to civilian authority.
The Army will therefore ensure that even if Nawaz lives by the ‘formula’ and gets a fourth term, he will be politically hobbled by being forced to head a coalition government, whose strings will be controlled by the GHQ in Rawalpindi. Normally, the life of coalitions in Pakistan ranges between 18 months to 32 months and even less so because it will have to take many really tough decisions to put the country back on track (at least economically).
Although questions will be raised about the legitimacy of any elections in which Imran Khan is not allowed to participate, but these questions are unlikely to bother the power players in Pakistan. Legitimacy is an overrated virtue in Pakistani politics where power brings its own legitimacy.
Former Balochistan Chief Minister, Aslam Raisani, had once famously said a graduation degree is a degree regardless of whether it is genuine or fake; similarly, in Pakistan, an election victory is an election victory regardless of whether it came from popular support or Engineering. There have been any number of elections in the past in which the dice was loaded against one or the other party. But that never stopped the victors from claiming legitimacy; nor did it make people rise up in revolt over their mandate being denied or stolen.
From Nawaz Sharif’s perspective though, problem is not so much about the legitimacy of the political process but it is about his and his party’s dwindling popularity. There is no denying the fact that he has a support base; but it also has become quite evident that it is no longer the powerhouse it was five years ago. He will need to rebuild this power-base, if he has to have any chance of governing even moderately well. His coming home party - the rally in Lahore - is seen moderately by many in terms of the crowd turnout. It wasn’t the largest collection of people at the Minar-e-Pakistan grounds, but it was big enough for the PML-N to claim that it is on the upswing with Nawaz having returned.
If Nawaz Sharif’s speech is anything to go by, he doesn’t really have a solidly worked out plan on how to fix the economy. There was all the usual stuff of what would be done but absolutely nothing about how it would be done. All he offered was generalities about the agenda of the party to revive the country, but there were no specifics. Even the agenda had nothing new to offer. It was more of the same, old and tired and tried slogans: Increase exports, bring about an IT revolution, cut government expenses and reform the taxation system, creating employment and reforming the public sector etc. All this has been spoken and promised countless times earlier with absolutely nothing to show for it. What will be different this time? No one really knows. In any case, Nawaz Sharif’s model of development is to go for big fancy projects that everyone can see and feel but zero fundamental reform. There is no reason to believe that he has anything different to offer in his fourth innings but he is the one to be owned.
