Daily Times

Now more than ever Pakistan needs a strong, resilient and wise leadership – a politician with true popular support, a leader who can unify all the ethnic minorities, who has a track record of reviving the economy, who understands the mindset of civil bureaucracy, who can keep the establishment at bay, and who can rise above the party lines.

True, I have never supported the political rhetoric of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) but it is also true that I believed it would manage the country well if it came into power. My reasoning: Imran khan enjoyed the support of most educated urban middle class, so he would find a dedicated team to implement his ideas of debt reduction and clean government in letter and the spirit. I was wrong.

Without lambasting the government for its numerous mistakes anymore, I surmise the experiment that both the Pakistani bourgeoise and the establishment conducted by succumbing to the stardom of the former cricketer and by promoting an empty rhetoric of accountability against financial embezzlement has failed. Time has come to stop it. Then what? In the current situation, the person who can lug the country out of turmoil is no one else but Mian Nawaz Sharif. It may sound biased, but allow people to vote in a free and fair elections today see who comes into power. Same claim holds true for 2018 polls.

What we see is that the PML-N has reduced the politics of the whole country to Mian Nawaz Sharif’s health, his incarceration and his daughter’s house arrest, and her ability to travel abroad

A side note: His brother Mian Shahbaz Sharif, the president of Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) does not count. Why? He possesses some administrative skills; no doubt, but he neither enjoys popular support, carries the charisma, or bothers himself with the notion of civilian supremacy. Think of him as a good task force manager, a prominent figure that once the party comes into power can be put to work with a defined agenda.

Having said that, help me understand what kind of hand in politics is Mian Nawaz Sharif dealing by keeping quiet? Millions voted for him in the elections. They celebrated his performance during the last tenure, and appreciated his narrative to respect the power of the vote. Against all odds, they also made the PML-N the largest party in Punjab and the second largest party in the country. Had Jahangir Tareen not ‘lured’ the independent members of the Punjab assembly to join the PTI, the PML-N could have formed a government once again.

To be honest, him being closely monitored by a group of physicians – which we want him to be – does not preclude him from calling a press conference, expressing his views on the true rigging in the general elections of 2018 unlike the false claims of 2013. But never in almost two years has he decided to take the people in confidence.

A few months ago, the Supreme Court of Pakistan handed over a great opportunity to the opposition on the extension of tenure of the current chief of the army staff. Mian Nawaz Sharif could have taken and run away with it. To the dismay of his supporters, he just did the opposite. He capitulated sweeping the notion of civilian supremacy down again.

Adding further insult, what we see is that the PML-N has reduced the politics of the whole country to Mian Nawaz Sharif’s health, his incarceration and his daughter’s house arrest, and her ability to travel abroad. In the first year after the polls, the PML-N just focused on Mian Nawaz Sharif being put behind bars, the next few months were spent on him being released and allowed to seek treatment in the West and in the last few months it seems to follow a single point agenda: let the family reunite. Most people believe her silence on Twitter is part of that strategy.

Under no circumstances, we can justify how the Sharif family has been put behind bars, house arrested or maligned. It is shameful. Nonetheless, how the Sharif family is using its political support to get personal benefits cannot be justified either. Middle-class urban Pakistani voters do not like the PPP or the PML-N exactly for that reason. Both parties are led by their respective founding families for the last few decades and have not allowed a non-family member to climb up the ladder. The result? Hardworking second tier leadership always stays the second tier, as their loyalties are tested with the person and not with the ideology. Do we not know that the baton of leadership of the PML-N will be passed on to Maryam Nawaz Sharif in due course? Whether it happens before Mian Shahbaz Sharif, the leader of opposition in the National Assembly, or after needs to be seen. Similarly, Punjab will be governed by Hamza Shahbaz Sharif, the current leader of the opposition in the Provincial Assembly.

Let us mark this discussion for another date. For now, Mian Nawaz Sharif must end his silence while continuing his treatment; people need to know. They deserve to be included in part of the political process and must not be kept in the dark, they need to be provided the same hope they had after the 2013 elections but without the circus of a sit-in, the grand conspiracy.

The writer is a US-based freelance columnist. He tweets at @KaamranHashmi and can be reached at skamranhashmi@gmail.com