Is Nawaz Slipping?
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada
Faced with this question, is Nawaz slipping, an alert and informed Pakistani—or an observer of the Pakistani scene—would jump to his feet and say, ‘Hey, wait a minute. This question is moot.’
It’s moot because it assumes that Nawaz was in control or had a firm grip on affairs of state he was supposed to control from the word, go. But the man hasn’t really got going, to date. His government—now 125 days old—still looks like it’s still-born. And the third-term PM is giving all the appearance of a person sleep-walking.
Nawaz came to power, in early June, amid a fanfare of great expectations from the people who’d given him a clear mandate. His campaign rhetoric only whetted the people’s roster of expectations. They expected him to effect if not a whole lot of change in their lives then, at the very least, some meaningful, some tangible change that should set his rule apart from the gang of robbers and thieves they had been made to put up with during the years of Zardari.
However, at the completion of his first 125 days in power—calculated to make 7 % of the time allotted to him, assuming he, too, will have a full and un-interrupted stint in power as did his predecessor—his track record makes dismal reading.
All that a rejuvenated Nawaz—the mantra his cronies and minions have been trying hard to market as his new face in power—has ‘achieved’ in this period is a litany of woes and suffering his government has inflicted on the hapless people of Pakistan.
Spiralling, run-away, prices and upward climbing indices of cost of living present a nightmare scenario to a layman. Power theft—an endemic malady in Pakistan—remain unchecked and unattended but electricity tariff seems to be going through the roof. Petrol prices have gone up in incremental leaps. Prices of daily necessities under no control and spinning themselves out of the common man’s reach. The Pakistani rupee, battered under the old regime, has been given a harsh beating in these few weeks, so much so that it has declined by more than 6 %, vis-à-vis the prized US dollar in a span of less than a month.
Why is it so, one may be fully entitled to ask, given all that hullabaloo that had greeted Nawaz, putting his past decade of ignominy behind him, as Pakistan’s man-of-the-moment and a ‘deliverer’ to the people pounded mercilessly under Zardari’s filching kleptocracy.
The problem isn’t—as Shakespeare would’ve said—with Nawaz’ stars. The problem, as Sherlock Holmes would’ve intoned to his dear Dr Watson, is ‘elementary.’
Nawaz Sharif himself is the biggest problem facing his government. It’s his style of governance which is making it so very difficult for the government he was expected to lead, inspire and move off a dead center.
The problem is the PM’s imperious style of governance, his imperial fallacy of what should be a government.
Nawaz is his own foreign minister, his own defense minister, his own commerce minister et al. The man seems to have a pathological attachment to power. He wants to amass as much of it as he can, and doesn’t want to part with any aspect or segment of power. In simple words, he wants to eat his cake and have it, too; and that too entirely, completely.
He thinks he’s become the Czar of Pakistan and should rule only with the help of a small coterie of yes-men and drooling sycophants whose lust of power has a strong amalgam of money-making as its essential spin-off.
It’s not even a collegial style of governance but a familial one. The younger Mian—that unstable character obsessed with power to a greater degree than the older sibling—Shahbaz Sharif is the adviser-in-chief of the PM, with only side interest in running the most important and populous province of the federation. In his own domain, Shahbaz is even a notch more imperious than the older Mian; he’s already anointed his eldest son, Hamza Shahbaz, as the crown prince running day-to-day-affairs of Punjab to give elbow room to the father to focus more intently on Islamabad and meddle in affairs of the federation to his heart’s content.
The kitchen-cabinet hangover that Nawaz had acquired in his two previous innings in power shows no symptom of going away. But this nuisance would be tolerable had he larded his cellar with men of merit and vision. But it’s the same old faces—tired, jaded and pock-marked with inertia written large over their scowling faces. These deadwoods can’t turn things around, and anyone pinning any hopes on them would only be day-dreaming.
But the people would still have tolerated Nawaz’ endemic infatuation with cronyism—the bane of Pakistan for decades—as an essential fallout of the country’s feudal lords had there been some movement in the air, some waves washing on their shore. But things are standing still, dead-still in fact, as if frozen in time under the spell of some witch.
Who can argue the merit, nay ineluctable necessity, of independent and competent ministers running the show in foreign affairs, defence and commerce. But the man is so hopelessly infatuated and obsessed with all power nestling under his hat that he wouldn’t countenance parting with his prized booty of power.
Important foreign missions—Washington, London, Delhi—need new ambassadors—men of trust and confidence---posted quickly to replace the flunkies inserted there by the ancient regime. But Nawaz remains unmoved like a log. Is he waiting for divine providence to send him a signal and only then he’d pick up men to man these posts?
General Kayani, a suave and erudite man, no doubt, had to shame the PM by making his own announcement that he will be stepping down from his coveted position, come November 29, and had decided to call it a day. It’s nice and intelligent of Kayani to make his own move in the interest of a smooth transition of power at the pinnacle of the military hierarchy. He has, off his bat, given Nawaz a full six weeks to come up with his choice of Kayani’s replacement.
But the question is, why couldn’t Nawaz and his kitchen colleagues, cohorts and minions think of the urgency of the matter and name a successor to Kayani without his jogging them into action? And why on earth has he not named, yet, the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee although the incumbent, General Shamim Wyne, has already retired?
The problem, manifesting itself in crystal clarity to even a casual observer, is Nawaz’ increasingly haughty mannerism. It could only be a spin-off of the man’s larger-than-life perception of himself. The imperiousness is showing clearly on his visage. He has been moving around as if the people of Pakistan had crowned him as their king, nay emperor. So he isn’t in any hurry to do things that others expect him to do; he would only do what he deems right, and do it in his own sweet time.
This off-setting imperiousness is clearly a bequest of his years in exile spent in the not-too-healthy company of Arab potentates—monarch, sheikhs and others of their ilk. Those wealthy and powerful Arabs have tons of money and don’t know how to put it to the best interest of their people. So they are splurging it on towers soaring into the sky and highways that go nowhere.
Nawaz has apparently imbibed a lot of the lethal virus of self-grandeur and one-upmanship. But his tragedy is that he’s presiding over a pauper state which must beg to make its ends meet, barely. He promised the people to break the begging bowl—the abiding shame of successive generations of Pakistanis—but it has only been growing bigger on his watch.
But he thinks he must boast, nevertheless, of fast-forwarding Pakistan into the 21 st century, if not the 22 nd. He returned from China with mega dreams under his belt to make an all-weather skyway from Gwadar to Kashgar. He talks of a posh subway system and rapid transit in a Karachi which doesn’t even have enough smoke-belching monsters that go by the name of buses. His latest day-dream is of building a ‘New Islamabad’ across the Margala Hills. His fairy tales make one to believe that some serendipity, on his last voyage to China, loaded him with Aladin’s magic lamp. So Pakistan, with him at the helm, can weather any storm and turn the country around to become a land of flowing milk-and-honey.
One has to conclude, sadly and with a heavy heart, that nothing has changed in Nawaz or in the erratic style of governance that had doomed his two previous attempts to scale the ramparts of power. No sign of maturity, and no ray of hope that he’d mend his ways. Imperiousness is ruling the roost, as usual. The country’s economy my go to the dogs but the PM must still travel to New York, ostensibly to deliver a 20-minute address before the UN General Assembly but spend a full week in expensive Manhattan surrounded and escorted, of course, by family and hordes of friends and minions. The PM’s family and flunkies were seen whizzing around glitzy shops and night spots in limousines that ordinary people may only gawk at.
Where are you going, Mian Sahib, and where are you leading the country that has given you a ‘heavy-mandate’ in a trance? Wake up, for God’s sake and come to your senses. Pakistanis may be a people of big hearts and great hospitality. But they don’t like their hospitality being abused. They may have made the error of giving you a mandate but will not tolerate anyone—you, included—treating it like a license. Enough of it, please. - K_K_ghori@yahoo.com
(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)
