Daily Times

Mr Nawaz Sharif, head of his own faction of Pakistan Muslim League (PML), is in London with heart trouble. The good news for his well-wishers is that it has been attended to, and that he should be back on his feet, ready to resume his role in politics. He is the undisputed leader of his party; no effective challenges to his position have surfaced. He professes to be a champion of democracy, and his own operational style is consultative, not autocratic.

He has been an effective party manager. He has maintained his faction of the PML as a united and coherent organisation. No further divisions in his party have occurred. He has been consulting teams of district level party officials to know their perceptions of the current juncture with regard to politics, aspirations or grievances. He has initiated membership enrolment drives and planned party elections at the district and sub-district levels. He seems to be ahead of some of the other party leaders in democratising his own party’s internal decision making procedures and processes.

Some observers believe that his brother, Shahbaz, could replace him. I do not share this interpretation. Party management will not come as easily to him. In his role as the chief minister of Punjab he may have done favours to certain party notables, but it is equally likely that he declined to do errands for others, especially when the favours they demanded were unlawful or otherwise improper. It is fair to assume that these disappointed politicians turned away from him in an unfriendly frame of mind. He may have been able to keep the PML members of the Punjab Assembly in line. The alienated party notables who are members of the National Assembly are not necessarily within his reach. This creates a serious problem for his leadership of the party as a whole.

A few months ago, Mr Nawaz Sharif circulated a 10-point agenda containing his policy guidelines and preferences to the general public and leaders of other political parties. It was professedly applauded in all quarters and no part of it became controversial. This document said that he stands for a free market economy (or one might say a reformed version of capitalism), democracy, parliamentary supremacy, eradication of corruption, rule of law, and deference to the judiciary. He called upon the present government to implement this agenda within 45 days of its publication, failing which he would launch a mass movement in its favour. Prime Minister Gilani also applauded it but has hardly made any move so far to put it into practice. It cannot be assumed that Mr Sharif’s advocacy would be acted upon if a government of his own choice were in power. It is clear that some of his demands, such as the eradication of corruption, would take a very long time and sustained effort to be fulfilled.

Mr Nawaz Sharif’s political fortunes rest not only on his own capabilities but also on the low esteem in which his principal rival, the PPP, is held in Punjab. Its shoddy performance during the last three years in power at the Centre has given it the reputation of being irretrievably corrupt and incompetent. Nawaz Sharif’s observations noted above have been made while he is out of power. Opposition politicians tend to claim that they stand for the generally approved policy choices and courses of action. But when in power they do not necessarily abide by the assurances they had given the people earlier. Mr Sharif did not act in the manner he is now advocating when he was prime minister in the 1990s. At that time he was not averse to the use of physical violence in dealing with his opponents and others of whom he did not approve. It is a known fact that his party workers (hoodlums if you prefer), presumably with his concurrence, invaded the Supreme Court of Pakistan and attacked the chief justice in his chambers. Nor can it be said that during his two terms as prime minister his associates and subordinates exercised self-restraint and abstained from taking money that did not belong to them.

The optimist will tell us that, having learnt from experience, people change for the better. That is true in some cases and not in others. It is said so very often in our political discourse that neither the rulers nor the people themselves in this country learn anything from the past. The generals are a good case in point. Several of them have seized the government one after the other in spite of the fact that none of them has done well as a ruler. General Ziaul Haq’s rule of more than ten years is in retrospect regarded as having been the worst in our history. His poor performance did not stop General Parvez Musharraf from overthrowing a civilian government in October 1999. He governed Pakistan for nine years, and he is not rated significantly better. In her second term as prime minister, Benazir Bhutto did even worse than she had done in her first term, meaning that she had learned nothing from her experience.

It is possible that if and when Nawaz Sharif gets to be prime minister again he will be both wiser and gentler than before. It is widely believed that he gives advice and counsel to his brother Shahbaz in the latter’s governance of Punjab. To the extent that the latter’s stewardship of this province has merit, some of it may possibly be attributed to Nawaz Sharif.

As noted above, the PPP government at the Centre is grossly corrupt and incompetent. Nawaz Sharif’s presence on the political scene and his influence serve to some degree as a counterpoise to its arbitrariness and capriciousness.

The writer, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, is a visiting professor at the Lahore School of Economics. He can be reached at dranwar@lahoreschool.edu.pk