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Sunday, May 26, 2013
Promise of PM-elect Nawaz SharifBy Imtiaz Alam
Mr. Nawaz Sharif is our prime minister-elect again with a clear majority that may touch two-thirds mark in the lower house. Defeating Imran Khan’s wave that could garner only 19 per cent votes and eight NA seats, Mr. Sharif swept the elections by getting 49 per cent votes and 116 NA seats in the majority-Punjab alone—the bastion of civil and military establishment. Immediately after their maiden meeting in Lahore, both Mr. Sharif and General Kayani spoke at different tangents on the issue of terrorism, even though their points of reference were different. Will the new PM be able to deliver on some of his promises not entirely shared by a powerful establishment that did not let him complete his last two tenures?
After defying most autocratic former president Ghullam Ishaq Khan in 1993 with a fiery speech, Mr. Sharif has stood to his guns on some very critical issues, such as civilian supremacy and rapprochement with India that cost him his second tenure as PM. Emerging out of the pro and anti-Bhutto divide of the 80s and 90s, he has intelligently carved out a broader constituency out of an otherwise reactionary PNA-coalition by isolating the religious right, such as Jamaat-i-Islami, etc., and taking a center-right moderately conservative course tuned to neoliberal economics that suits the genius of “Deen-o-Dunya” paradigm of our bourgeoisie and mercantile classes.
When he was arbitrary removed from power in 1993 that caused a real rift within the power structure and both he and Ghullam Ishaq Khan had to go on the intervention of the arbiter of our destiny. After he had broken his ties with the establishment that nurtured him as a protégé to confront Ms Benazir Bhutto in the Punjab, Mr. Sharif has been maturing enough to set his own agenda, reflecting the new level of adulthood of the Punjabi bourgeoisie that now resented the interference of the state in its expanding businesses that eyed a lucrative Indian market as a greater promise in their growth that remained stultified due to an intractable Indo-Pak conflict and anarchic terrorism.
Being an elder entrepreneur of the leading industrial house of Sharifs in Pakistan, Mr. Nawaz Sharif’s greater emphasis has been on economic investment and growth in a larger regional context that has persuaded him to revisit Punjab’s traditional animosity towards India. And this has ben the primary cause behind Mr. Sharif’s tension with the military establishment during his second stint in power. When he tried to make a breakthrough with India, a clique of generals under General Musharraf subverted his peace endeavors with India with its Kargil misadventure that led to a military coup and in his exile. Have things changed now? Answer is both yes and no.
As for as yes, things have changed both constitutionally and institutionally. By signing Charter of Democracy with Ms. Bhutto and getting the 18th, 19th and 20th amendments passed with unanimity and taking the lead in getting a pro-active judiciary restored, Mr. Sharif is better placed to negotiate his terms with a powerful army, if he did not waste his energies on peripheral fights, including with a hyper-active media, concentrated on alleviating the sufferings being caused by load-shedding and facilitated US-ISAF’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. So far, he has done well by appeasing major political actors by taking Baloch-Pakhtun nationalists on board in Balochistan, letting Imran Khan’s Tehreek-i-Insaaf struggle with solving the mess in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) and giving freedom to PPP-MQM duo to fight it out among themselves in Sindh.
The withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan demands that everybody should be on the same page in negotiating the most problematic transition. Mr. Sharif has got the best possible endorsement from the international community and he seems eager to play his cards the way he finds best—an assertion rarely seen during the last five years of the PPP rule. After President Obama has show some flexibility and morality about the issue of “signature targeting” by drones, Mr. Sharif may find some space in finding an ‘honorable’ solution of the sorts to the violation of our sovereignty over our air-space, even though we refrain or fail to stop the terrorists from undermining it on our territory. And without stopping the hordes of terrorists maintaining their safe havens on our soil, how will the new PM ensure that Pakistan’s territory is not used for terrorism against other countries, neighbors in particular?
Although the balance of forces has been in favor of over-developed and overlapping security structures, it is also not without constraints, both institutional and circumstantial. The army is deeply struck with the quagmire of innumerable terrorist outfits threatening its monopoly of state’s coercive power and cannot afford to further destabilize a country that is eroding from within. But both hide and seek, fighting and coalescing have continued ever since Pakistan joined the America’s war on terror that has eventually turned into the principal threat to out security, regardless of its horrendous origin. It was the army that kept the distinction of good Taliban (ready to work with it) and bad Taliban (who became the warriors of their own cause). Even the all parties’ conference held under former PM Yousuf Raza Gillani took the line: no fight, talk-talk that was loudly acclaimed by Imran Khan as his victory but it was on somebody else’s wink and we know who.
Although the Chief of Army Staff General Pervaiz Kayani had finally come out with a categorical statement against terrorism while rejecting any justification for it on any pretext, the army is still inclined to shift the burden to the civilian shoulders. So, what is the difference between COAS’s and Sharif’s position except that the latter wants to give negotiations a chance to, perhaps, assuage his conservative constituency. But as the US withdrawal from Afghanistan gets nearer by 2014 with no less enormous implications for Pakistan, the country has to decide much in advance and now how to cope with the far-reaching consequences.
What do we want is the question? Do we want a repeat of what stupidities we have been committing after the Soviet’s withdrawal in the pursuit of a so-called strategic depth (in an otherwise most treacherous quagmire of Afghanistan)? Or do we want to clean up our own country of the scourge of terrorism and not let Taliban takeover Kabul and, consequently, not let them sway our Pakhtun-belt or Talibanise whole of Pakistan? Or keep good Taliban to let Afghanistan fall in the hands of Afghan Taliban in the false hope of retrieving strategic depth (or in fact strategic trap)? Mr. Sharif is not enamored with the idea of strategic depth in Afghanistan. He wants Pakistan to keep out of Afghanistan’s internal matters, nor pursue strategic depth whatsoever. The army is also not very keen now to pursue an idea that is not tenable. Even on India, the country can’t afford a twin-front conflict and what Mr. Sharif is rightly asking for is a paradigm shift for the future.
However, the PM-elect is not yet clear on what options he is to make to control terrorism without which he cannot realize his esteemed dream of reviving the economy and moving on the road to prosperity? How will he combine his wishful thinking of talking to Pakistani Taliban and their three-dozen variants and make them accept the writ of the state? Either they or state concede the writ is the question. How will he be fulfilling his responsibilities if he doesn’t save people’s lives and properties for the sake of alluring Taliban? If the new PM will be reluctant to fight terrorism, it will provide the army an excuse to shift the burden on his shoulder.
The tedious question, however, is that: will the armed forces allow a civilian leader take the lead? And why should not armed forces respect the peoples’ mandate and not mess with the bigger issues that don’t fall in their domain but could affect them adversely if approached form narrow security prisms. An unnecessary power struggle between the civilian and military centers of power can cause greater harm to the country at this critical juncture and both sides should find some reasonable ground to co-exist for the betterment of the country and its people. Why not evolve a modus operande and SOaPs? The best way out is to evolve an institutional arrangement under the elected Chief Executive— an internal and external security forum with all stakeholders on board.
The PM-elect has taken the electorate in confidence on all issues, economy and peace with India in particular, except his ambiguity over how to tackle terrorism. He must come out with a clear national agenda and a plan of action, for 100 days and beyond, and take along the major political parties and other stakeholders to put the country back on rail to peace and progress. Besides implementing the decisions of the previous government on trade and visas with India, he will have to wait for an interlocutor in New Delhi after the next elections. Mr. Sharif must deliver on his economic promise that is worth supporting for the sake of democratic consolidation. (Imtiaz.safma@gmail.com)
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk