Daily Times

For many nights I have had the same dream. I see Imran Khan’s face while he is making one of his impassioned speeches about nothing much and then his face slowly morphs into that of Mian Nawaz Sharif, our Prime Minister (PM). No, this is not a nightmare, just an ordinary, repetitive dream and I wake from it feeling not at all disturbed. However, I finally started thinking about why I keep having this dream about Khan morphing into Sharif. And then an epiphany! These two seeming antagonists are really more alike than they are different.

First, the simple thing that binds these two: what Sharif has and Khan wants desperately is the position of PM. To be PM, Khan would give up almost anything, as it is he has given up home and hearth to live in and on top of a container for the last many months. Of course, Sharif would like nothing better than to have been a great cricketer though having a reasonably full head of hair and Khan’s good looks might also be welcome. If we take Khan’s charisma, personal popularity, good looks, his passion and his relatively ‘clean’ past and mix it up with Sharif’s wealth and political experience, we would definitely get one terrific PM.

The other thing that makes Khan and Sharif political soul mates is their political philosophy or lack thereof. Other than an avowed attachment to religious virtues and the populist pabulum that they both feed the public, there is little substance to their politics. One thing binds them together more than all else: they both represent the anti-PPP political position. One can say that they are both conservative centre right politicians, or at least the people who support them think that they are. Considering the fact that both of them represent an almost identical political point of view, the question that then comes to mind is why the two of them are at each other’s proverbial throats. The simplistic answer is that Khan wants to replace Sharif as PM. However, that is virtually impossible under almost every conceivable political scenario.

So what that might mean — and that was the intrinsic part of the ‘epiphany’ — is that they both need each other at this time. Not unlike two exhausted boxers they are holding on to each other so that they can both keep standing. Khan needs Sharif for, without him, his entire campaign about rigged elections falls apart and with that any chance of winning any election in the near future. To become PM, Khan needs to win Punjab and, so far, he does not have the requisite support to achieve that end. So for Khan the best option at this time is to keep up his campaign and keep on accumulating support, not just in Punjab but also in Sindh. Frankly, the time is not ripe for Khan and his party to go into a general election just yet. And Khan’s calculation is that, as Sharif gets weaker, Khan gets stronger.

On the other hand, Sharif also needs Khan. Since Sharif and his government have not been able to deliver on any of their election promises, Sharif badly needs an excuse for his failures. Dharnas (sit-ins) are of course the reason why not a single mini watt of electricity has been added to the national grid in the last 18 months. And if the ‘talented brother’ had his druthers, he would blame every traffic accident, every armed robbery and every unfortunate mortality in every hospital in Punjab on the dharnas. Unfortunately for both Sharif and Khan, like the aforementioned exhausted boxers, eventually they will both collapse, especially if they keep on throwing wild punches at each other.

From a political point of view, both adversaries in this confrontation will suffer. For Khan, there is the law of diminishing returns and somewhere along the line he will stop adding to his support or worse start losing support. People have short attention spans and unless something new and exciting happens, they will eventually lose interest. On the other hand, as Khan keeps up his campaign to disrupt normal life in the cities, especially in Punjab, and if he keeps succeeding at that, whether he becomes more popular or not, Sharif and his government will start to seem ineffectual. Some believe that, as it is, the Sharifs have lost control both at the centre and in Punjab. Even if that is not entirely true, it is undeniable that Sharif has already ceded control of the security policy to the army.

What happens next? Here, three factors need to be considered. First and foremost are the egos of the two people at the head of this confrontation. Both are known to be extremely rigid and it is unlikely that some sort of a compromise, even though desirable, will be reached. The second consideration is the role of the judiciary and whether it allows recounting to be done in one or more of the disputed seats. The government is trying its best to prevent any recounting and this opens up Sharif to the charge that his ‘minions’ did indeed rig the elections and that is why he is afraid of any recount. It will have to be seen which way the courts go in this matter. And the third factor, though of less importance, is the role of political parties that have so far supported Sharif in this confrontation.

Perhaps of all these the most important is the role of the judiciary. If recounts are allowed and if there seem to be serious irregularities then that will undermine the legitimacy of the Sharifs’ electoral success in the last election. If that happens then what happens next is anybody’s guess. Barring such developments, I believe that both Khan and Sharif will keep at it for as long as they can for the reasons I have mentioned above.

The writer has practiced and taught medicine in the US. He can be reached at smhmbbs70@yahoo.com