Straight-Talk
Nawaz Sharif Will Be Tested on Home and Foreign Fronts
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada
As these lines are being written, Nawaz Sharif is getting elected by the new National Assembly of Pakistan as its leader. This will automatically catapult him to the pinnacle of power in the Federation of Pakistan as its Prime Minister for an unprecedented—and all well-wishers of his and Pakistan would fervently hope a lucky—third stint.
Who in their right mind could deny that Nawaz Sharif is a very lucky man, indeed?
Without fear of sounding trite or pedestrian, one could quote the title of a famous Bollywood film—Muqadar ka Sikandar, and say that’s exactly how the fickle finger of fate seems to have written Nawaz’ life-script. He’s today the man with the golden arm, or the Midas’ touch: whatever he touches turns into gold.
Pakistanis aren’t known for being very charitable, or forgiving, to their political leaders, especially those fallen from the pedestal of power. They don’t, often, give a second chance to those who failed to live up to their expectations.
However, Nawaz has already proved an exception to the rule–of-elimination from public grace.
Hounded out of office, in October 1999, by Pakistan’s last soldier –of-fortune (hopefully, the last for ever and for good) General Pervez Musharraf and forced into exile in Saudi Arabia, Nawaz had virtually been written off from Pakistan’s macabre political script. Pundits, then and later, too, were at one that the Nawaz saga was over and done with. Most expected him to vegetate in the Holy Land like, for instance, the idiosyncratic Idi Amin — ex-Ugandan dictator — and die a slow political demise.
But Nawaz has proved all such mealy-mouthed pundits wrong. Or, it would rather be more appropriate to say the people of Pakistan have caught them off balance by catapulting Nawaz back at the center of power with the power of their vote. Nawaz is the man of the moment and the man of destiny, while his nemesis, Musharraf, is dying a slow death as a prisoner in his plush farm house outside Islamabad.
The jubilation of Nawaz’ Pakistani acolytes and fans is easy to understand: their fallen hero has risen, phoenix-like, from the ashes and is poised to take off in glory.
But eager as this born-again hero of Punjab — if not of all of Pakistan —o r the rejuvenated proverbial phoenix of the folklore may be to soar to greater heights, the challenges ahead are not only too many but extremely sensitive and pressing too.
What Nawaz will not have is the luxury of time. His honeymoon with the people, if at all, is going to be the briefest in the checkered history of love-hate that blithely informs the collective genius of the people of Pakistan.
Pakistanis have this — or used to have as many would be quick to argue — inexplicable instinct of hero-worship. However, their patience with their heroes wears thin within no time. So Nawaz will have to watch his back as far as public approval or rating is concerned. People have high expectations of him. His task has become all the more taxing because the people’s reserve of patience was taxed to the limit under Zardari & Co.
That’s where the danger of derailment of people’s trust in Nawaz is likely to become acute. Those aware of the enormity of Pakistan’s socio-economic malaise — a bequest of five years of no-governance under Zardari’s kleptocracy — know that even a Hercules would balk at meeting the load of work that’s awaiting Nawaz in office.
It’s, without exaggeration, a Himalayas of challenges lying in wait for Nawaz and his team in office. They will need not only unstinted hard work but also tons of prayers — and benevolence from Nature — to come to grips with daunting issues, such as electricity, gas, water, unemployment, runaway inflation and rampant corruption at all levels of a bleeding and hobbled economy — to name just a few.
Yet, the people of Pakistan may be ready to give the new team time to find workable solutions to these challenges if only Nawaz succeeds — in, say about three to four months — providing relief to the people on the electricity front. That relief, if he can manage to pull it, will allow him a lot of breathing space and peace of mind to focus on other major issues.
Putting a new face, and new accent, on Pakistan’s tedious relations with US will, without doubt, be Nawaz’ number one foreign policy challenge as PM.
Pakistanis have had a love-hate relationship with the US for a very long time. However, in the past five years, the quantum of hate has increased manifold largely because of America’s undeclared war on Pakistan in which the drones are its principal weapon.
Drones are a weapon of provocation and torture as far as a common Pakistani is concerned. He doesn’t have the luxury of reading nuances or meanings into why America should go on unleashing this terror from the skies on unsuspecting people of Pakistan’s tribal areas. All that he knows is that it makes a mockery of Pakistan’s sovereignty and its sense of national dignity.
Nawaz Sharif will be under tremendous pressure from the people, from an energised news media and, closest to democratic dispensation, from a vocal opposition in the parliament — spearheaded by Imran’s PTI — to come up with credible answers to layman’s and intelligentsia’s searching questions on this subject. President Obama’s latest policy on drones —articulated by him with his usual sophistry -- is unlikely to make Nawaz’ task any easier.
Relations with India fall in the same category of top priority issues in foreign policy.
The Indian government, of PM Manmohan Singh, has shown uncharacteristic alacrity and exuberance in welcoming Nawaz’ re-emergence to the top of Pakistani hierarchy. It was quite a pleasant surprise to political pundits to find the Indians so full of beans on the prospects of a new phase of relations with Pakistan on Nawaz’ watch.
Manmohan Singh was the first leader outside Pakistan to congratulate Nawaz on his sweeping victory at the polls. He didn’t even wait for the official results to come in and greeted Nawaz as soon as the story broke of his astounding success. And then he sent his confidant, M.S. Lamba, to Lahore to convey his greetings to Nawaz and invite him to pay an early visit to India.
Nawaz Sharif reciprocated in kind. Granting his first post-victory television interview to an Indian channel, he spoke of his determination to seek good neighbourly relations with India and pick up the thread of his peace initiative, of 1999, from where it was snatched from his hands by Musharraf’s abrasive intervention.
Foreign Minister Salman Khursheed chipped in a day or two later to welcome Nawaz’ renewed affirmation of good ties with India as a top foreign policy priority of his and hoped that the incoming Pakistani leader would ‘deliver’ on his commitments.
What were the ‘commitments’ Khursheed was alluding to?
The first commitment Nawaz undertook was to set up an independent and thorough enquiry into General Musharraf’s Kargil misadventure, which had brought the two neighbours so very close to a full-scale shooting war.
But the episode had greater tragedy woven into it for Nawaz. Kargil undermined the initiative he had begun with his then Indian counterpart, Vajpayee, and which had brought the latter on a bus to Lahore to jump-start a moribund relationship. Even more tragic and melodramatic was a Bonaparte Musharraf using his reverses on the Kargil front to topple Nawaz from power and thrust himself on to Pakistan’s governance.
Nawaz’ second undertaking related to the November 2008 Mumbai mayhem and its Pakistani perpetrators. Nawaz let the Indians know that he intended to share with them the findings of an ongoing probe into the alleged involvement of elements of the Pakistani state in Mumbai’s tragic events.
Skeptics and Jeremiahs in Pakistan (I don’t know much about their Indian opposite numbers, if any) are already casting doubts on how far, and how much, Nawaz would be able to deliver on what they see as a tough agenda in his renewed undertaking to patch things up with India and infuse a new dynamism into a relationship which was, at best, a roller-coaster ride in the past five years.
No serious student or observer of India-Pakistan relations would be so irresponsible, or cavalier, as to ignore or minimise the obstacles and land mines of deep distrust of each other that litters the way with abandon. Cobwebs of mental reservations about each other’s intents and purposes abound aplenty and pose a daunting challenge to any peacenik on either side of the Divide.
The latest survey, by the US-based Foreign Policy Institute has come up with the startling finding of 94 % of Indians seeing Pakistan as a security threat over the next ten years. Their opinion anchored, no doubt, in their perception of Pakistan as a bastion of terrorism.
And, yet, with all these trepidations and reservations — I would pass calling them mental fixations — Nawaz Sharif remains the best bet to pull this chestnut out of the fire and square the India-Pakistan circle.
As Punjab’s undisputed leader — and 65 % of Pakistanis live in Punjab — Nawaz carries the bulk of Pakistan behind him. Interestingly, conventional wisdom in Pakistan says that Punjab has been the traditional hotbed of enmity to India. But Punjab has changed and its most famous son is now eager to stand in the vanguard of a mindset transformation of ties with India.
As the scion of a merchant family, Nawaz understands better than other, run-of-the-mill, politicians tethered to their feudal roots that the 21 st century world is a global market place where successful transactions can only be made on the age-old maxim of give-and-take.
Now , more than ever before, when he’s going to inherit a bleeding Pakistani economy which — many an expert argue — is literally on life-support and hardly breathing, Nawaz needs no genius to tell him the paramount need for Pakistan to close the book on bad relations with India and turn the leaf for a new chapter of close co-operation.
Will the powerful Pakistan army allow him a free hand to forge ahead with India is a question agitating pundits and crystal ball-gazers right across the intellectual spectrum. Will Nawaz not be looking over his shoulders, all the time, to make sure that he doesn’t ruffle feathers at GHQ, or dare cross the red lines the brass and boots have long drawn for any civilian government in Pakistan?
Hasn’t Nawaz suffered enough at the hands of the army in his previous two terms, the pundits argue with passion, to dare not take the powerful generals on their turf in his god-send third coming?
Pundits are already reading a lot into the meeting between Nawaz and General Kayani in Lahore, shortly after Nawaz’ election triumph. What did the two have to discuss? Why was Kayani in such a haste to buttonhole Nawaz while he was still basking in the flush of triumph at the polls? What was so urgent to bring the General to Lahore to confab with the PM-in-waiting?
In the context of relations with India, the question agitating the informed minds most is whether General Kayani lent his and the military brass’ blessings to Nawaz’ affirmation to pick up the pieces with India from where his initiative was robbed by Musharraf, in 1999? Or was it just the opposite of it, i.e. Kayani warning Nawaz not to rush into mending the fences with India unless the core issues — Kashmir, Siachen et al. - were first out of the way.
It’s too early to say how the chips would, eventually, fall in place on Nawaz’ desire to inject the kind of dynamism in relations with India that he was so fervently pursuing in his last stint in power. The Indians seem ready, and eager, to level the playing field for him. But Nawaz will have to decide how to balance the demands of repairing the tattered socio-economic fabric at the home front with the call to turn a new leaf in ties with India.
Even with the best of intent and perseverance the calls on Nawaz from so many directions are daunting, to say the very least. God speed to him and good luck to the people of Pakistan; they have their fates tied with each other. - K_K_ghori@yahoo.com
(The writer is a former ambassador and career diplomat)
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