Why is Nawaz so Scared of Imran?
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada

As of the writing of these lines the news from Lahore, Nawaz Sharif’s citadel of power, is highly disturbing. The city, in thrall under the younger—and supposedly more brainy—sibling Shehbaz, has been turned into a fortress under siege.

Lahore has been transformed into a besieged city because of the fear paralysing its hare-brained and clueless rulers. They have been running like scared chickens because of the populist backlash mounted against them by Pakistan’s only charismatic and—in the real sense—populist political leader. Derided and ridiculed by minions of Nawaz & company as a political novice and upstart not tutored in the macabre ways of Pakistani politics, Imran has shown by far a more mature political sense than his rattled detractors could ever muster.

Sequestering a city or imposing Section 144 on it—as has been done in Lahore and Islamabad—are tactics of incompetent and clueless rulers who don’t know how to face or handle a crisis. This odious tool of raw power was wielded with impunity by the British colonisers of India in their hubris. The Mians—with pretensions of royalty aplenty of their own—think it’s an essential perquisite of power for them, too, to instill in their subjects the fear of whose reign they’re living in.

Earlier, in the face of Imran’s notice to launch his populist ‘Freedom March’ Nawaz Sharif had taken to the spiritual route. But the 10-day piety-driven hibernation in the Holy Land of Arabia apparently evoked no relief for his beleaguered rule from the Divine Being.

Dismayed by his unrequited’ spiritual therapy and with his supplications going unanswered, Mian Saheb then fell back on Pakistan’s own, home-grown, power deity-- the- all- too- powerful-and-resourceful Pakistan military. Nawaz’ irascible and insufferable Interior sleuth, the pugnacious Chaudhry Nisar had no compunction in delivering Islamabad to the clutches of the army for three long months. He did it under article 245 of the Constitution of Pakistan. Mian & company shouldn’t go bewailing if the same Constitution is availed of by some Bonaparte to send them packing—hopefully, this time for good.

Nawaz has, apparently, buried his hatchet with the army in the face of Imran’s frontal assault at his citadel. His bravado that provoked a confrontation with the powerful khakis in the distasteful Geo-induced confrontation has fizzled out. Of course, expediency dictated that he shouldn’t be taking on two adversaries at one and the same time. In any case, he’d be punching way beyond his limited visceral power to fight on two fronts at one time.

The GHQ Bonapartes have already dictated their agenda to him in North Waziristan, where they are, no doubt, up against a daunting task. How good a job they are doing will take some time to be assessed. But they’re back at the center of power as well as nation’s attention. The national infatuation with its jawans doing them a great service has received another hefty shot in the am. The public relations-conscious generals will be making merry on it is a cinch.

Would the army do the government’s bidding in handling Imran’s challenge the way Nawaz would like it to remains an open question at this juncture. The army has honed its skills of Pakistan’s principal king-maker over the past six decades and would decide entirely on its own where its chips should fall. King makers usually have an ace or two up their sleeves and wouldn’t use them until the time deemed apposite for it by them.

Nawaz’ minions and publicists have been on a snide, whispering, campaign that Imran has the tacit backing of GHQ in his initiative to take on Nawaz at his own turf. As inane and clueless as their mentor, these mealy-mouthed factotums are too brain-dumb to appreciate that the military command—hard-pressed for quick results in North Waziristan—would be in no mood to get entangled into any political adventure at this tense moment for them.

While all this may yet be a pie in the sky—and all sorts of permutations and combinations could be in tow behind—it’s no brain teaser why Imran is rushing into taking on Nawaz at this pass. He has more than one reason to take a crack at what Nawaz mistakenly thinks is his secure fortress for the next four more years too.

The contrasting popularity graphs of Imran and Nawaz are one powerful incentive for Imran to take on his adversary. Despite the not-too-commendable track record of his party’s government in KP, Imran’s own standing with the people of Pakistan remains unscathed. In inverse proportion to the dipping approval graph of his party in KP, Imran’s own graph remains upward climbing. Recent opinion polls—both domestic and foreign—have him as the most popular leader of Pakistan, head-and-shoulders ahead of his nearest rival.

In contrast, Nawaz’ public approval rating has taken a hefty hit in the 15 months of his term in office. He may think of himself as Pakistan’s uncrowned king but he’s becoming a pariah to popular approbation. And Nawaz has none but himself to blame for it. He seems to have no heart in governance, having rented it out to knaves and poltroons of his kitchen cabinet who have been making a mess of their undeserved powers. More than half of his working week is spent at his Raiwind royal retreat. What he does there, besides gorging himself on calories-laden delicacies, is anybody’s guess. Whatever else it may be, it isn’t governance, or anything akin to it.

Punjab, Nawaz’ supposed power base, is as good as a personal fief of Shehbaz who’s only slightly more attuned to the harsh realities of governing a problems-infested country like Pakistan than his older sibling. Shehbaz’ utterly pedantic handling of the gauntlet a Quixotic Tahirul Qadri has thrown his way is ample evidence that the allegedly ‘smarter’ of the two Sharif siblings is as much a political liability as the older one for the people of Pakistan.

The dismal, chaotic, job performance of Nawaz government over the period since it came to power is another powerful incentive for Imran to take it by its horns. Nawaz has had no answers to the mounting socio-economic problems of the people, who are rapidly running out of patience with his dithering and petty excuses for not alleviating their sufferings.

On the basis of these ground realities Imran may have decided that now is he time to give Nawaz a knock-out punch.

On the face of it, Imran didn’t begin with any outrageous demand. All that he was asking of the government was to have recount in some of the contentious electoral constituencies of Punjab, especially Lahore. Nawaz didn’t budge on this innocuous demand because all the disputed constituencies went as trophies to his family and cronies.

Nawaz’ reason for not conceding is powerful from his perspective. If recounting on four or, for that matter, any number of disputed seats establishes as true the allegation of organised rigging in last year’s election, the whole exercise would become tarnished and nothing would remedy the ugly outcome except fresh elections.

Fresh or, to use a popular Imran phrase, mid-term elections can’t be welcome news to a government already teetering on the back foot. In fact, nothing could be more dismaying and discomforting to Nawaz than going back to the electorate with a big zero writ large on his performance card.

Inversely, nothing would be more welcome to Imran than fresh elections where he might think he could knock the ground from under the Nawaz League’s feet in their stronghold of Punjab. That’s a nightmare to Nawaz and his knaves; even an apparition of it would be enough to give them sleepless nights.

All bets are off, as of now, how this rapidly building saga would play itself out, come August 14. But portents of it are not good at all. The clumsiness of a clueless but power-besotted bunch of clowns calling the shots under Nawaz’ banner doesn’t add one iota of optimism to the likely scenario that may unveil itself on the morning of Pakistan’s 67th Day of Independence. The feudal instincts and reflexes of the likes of Chaudhry Nisar or Shehbaz Sharif don’t bode well for anyone. Resorting to the use of force—brute and blind force of the type deployed against Tahirul Qadri’s aficionados in Lahore, last month, for instance—is doomed to backfire on the proponents and practitioners of it.

Imran may have calculated that any price in blood exacted from his, or Qadri’s followers, would be a price worth the eventual outcome of the confrontation.

However, if Nawaz and minions have the same thinking goading them on to the path of bloody confrontation, they might be in for a big surprise. They should remind themselves—subject to their mental faculties still being intact—of what a hard choice they would be investing into the hands of the country’s final arbiters, the military command. Despite its much-touted prowess on the battle-field and perspicacity in the situation room, the brass can ill-afford to don the two caps of saviors on both the physical and political frontiers of Pakistan.

The Pakistan army may have a not-too-undeserved reputation for relishing power in all its flavours. However, Pakistan in the jaws of its myriad crises is much too distasteful even for the most ardent connoisseurs of power. But who’s listening in Pakistan, if at all?

K_K_ghori@yahoo.com

(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)