Time for Nawaz to Go, for Good
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada
The contrast couldn’t be starker or more vivid.
As the iconic Abdul Sattar Edhi, Pakistan’s only saint since Mohammad Ali Jinnah was being sent off on the last journey of his life with full state honors, the country’s sitting Prime Minister stealthily sneaked back into his native Lahore after an absence of nearly 50 days.
An aura of mystery and intrigue had surrounded Nawaz’ medical ‘mission’ to London since the moment it was announced, in May, that he was to undergo open heart surgery.
Pakistanis, of all hues and descriptions, have long been miffed at their political actors’ annoying lack of trust in the medical expertise available, in abundance, at home in Pakistan. They seem to have this incontinent proclivity to rush to London, or New York, or anywhere posh in the Western world, even for the treatment of common cold. Are they so scared and distrustful of Pakistani physicians as never to let them be their messiah in preference to the so-called Western ‘specialists’?
The mystery wouldn’t go away—with a good chunk of a vibrant social media—about what, if any, really ailed Nawaz even when he was said to have gone under the surgeon’s knife in an ‘exclusive’ London hospital.
Such is the abysmal state of Nawaz’ credibility with the people of Pakistan that a section of the social news media refused to accept that surgery had, in fact, been performed to repair Nawaz’ ailing heart. They said it was all a show orchestrated to divert attention from the thieving Nawaz clan caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
Grist, in spades, had been in supply since the PM’s earlier visit to London, ostensibly for medical advice and consultation, when he was photographed shopping for Saville Row suits in exclusive tailoring shops of up-scale Mayfair. Well, those who know the man know it for a fact his fetish for expensive watches, shoes et al. of exclusive brands—a common disease with the nouveau riches.
The upstart Sharif clan, especially its younger lot informed by the likes of the ‘first daughter,’ Mariam Nawaz and the macho Punjab supremo, Shehbaz Sharif’s ‘first son,’ Hamza, also whetted the appetites of conspiracy buffs with their petty shenanigans. The first daughter took it upon herself to act as the alter ego of the bed-ridden ‘dear leader.’ She was the one tweeting, exclusively, about the PM’s health and medical recovery. What, if any, was her status in the official pecking order in the ‘establishment’, mused the conspiracy sleuths.
The PM, never known for spasms of brilliance or out-of-box thinking was equally ill-served by knaves and poltroons feigning to be his ‘advisers.’ The ‘leader’ wished to be seen as a bleeding heart concerned about his people’s welfare even from his sick bed. He doesn’t believe in delegating power to anyone, save a minion or two in his kitchen cabinet. But he wanted his secretariat to be available to him where he himself was—in London.
The PM has regal trappings, too. His mealy-mouthed pen-pushers and obsequious hacks have long been saying their ‘prince’ was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. This may be utter trash; garbage. But it has been peddled around and lapped up with zest, and the ‘prince’ born with whatever spoon, silver or plastic, has been throwing his weight around as if he was a veritable latter-day reincarnation of the Great Mughals. His opulent lifestyle certainly matches theirs, if not garishly eclipsing it.
So, dozens of PM’s personal staff and a clutch of secretariat officials were shipped out to London to be there, at his beck and call, to serve their master’s all and any wishes.
The nation, fed up with dysfunctional governance that has been consistently Nawaz’ hallmark in three years of his third-term, had ample reason to cry foul, loud and clear.
It may not matter to Nawaz—with his loot of billions stashed away in safe havens—but London has its reputation for being the most expensive city in the Western hemisphere. It didn’t take knowledge of rocket science for even a layman to calculate—and hit the roof—what the tab of this prime ministerial ‘majesty’ was going to be, just to serve the bloated ego of a piddling ‘leader’ who has served nothing but promises to a befuddled people in his three years in power.
The social media, as usual alert and hands-on, got its sums right in the end. Nawaz’ medical luxury in London has stuck Pakistan’s shaky and wobbly treasury with a price tag of at least Rupees 300 million. One can’t be sure if this would be the final tab, when all bills have been accounted for.
But whatever the figure the moral wasn’t lost on a people frustrated up to their eyeballs with their thieving leaders and ‘messiahs’ and their ever more clumsy attempts to hoodwink the masses.
Nawaz may never be able to fathom the impact of it—the man is too thick-skinned to be sensitive to what the people think of him—but the saint, Edhi’s last struggle with his myriad ailments while Nawaz was convalescing in luxury, served ample reminders to the people as to what separates a genuine humanist and loyal Pakistani from a faux leader with a mission to rob it.
Edhi had been repeatedly offered medical treatment abroad, including one from Zardari. But the true son of the soil that he was he turned them all down with disdain. Edhi’s faith in Pakistan stood out in sharp contrast to the likes of Nawaz, robbing Pakistan to the last nickel but being utterly insensitive to its economic woes and constraints. Edhi gave his all to Pakistan; Nawaz and his clan have never felt shy of robbing it clean.
It’s highly improbable that there would be any change in the lifestyle or mode of governance of the ‘reconditioned’ PM Nawaz. He and his cronies and minions are there in the sanctum of power only for personal aggrandizement and use power to gather ever more pelf. A businessman—that too of a petty kind—can never be a leader; this one was never meant or cut out to be one. It was a fluke of luck that foisted him on the people of Pakistan, and he has been riding his luck ever since. But enough is enough and Pakistan will be better off without the likes of him torturing the nation and taxing its patience to the hilt.
Nawaz must go for the good of Pakistan and its people. But how should he go is the million-dollar question begging an answer.
Pakistan has a history of unwanted leaders—those falling from grace or under-performing—eased out of their office, summarily. So it isn’t that the country would be taking a leap in the dark once it’s decided to ease out a PM who may have returned with a reconditioned heart but has obviously no blue-print on his anvil to change his modus of a mediocer-masquerading-as-a-leader.
As these lines were being written, news has come in of a strange new spectacle staring the people in their eyes in every city of any consequence in Pakistan. Huge bill boards have sprouted by road sides, literally overnight, bearing General Raheel Sharif’s portrait and slogan beseeching him to take over power. DG ISPR, speaking for the military establishment, has been quick to disown the bill boards in their entirety; the khakis have nothing to do with this move.
A war of words has already commenced between government spokesman—that mealy-mouthed Senator Parvez Rashid with barbs darting around from his mouth—and opposition leaders, pointing the finger at each other for resorting to dirty tricks.
A smooth-talking Senator Aitzaz Ahsan, seems to have hit a raw nerve in the establishment with his matter-of-fact, but pointedly incisive, contention that it’s a desperate legerdemain of a sinking government to shore up its fortunes. He has a point in arguing that Nawaz wants to caution his political opponents to not push him hard on the Panama Leaks, or else all politicians and their parties would be losers, with the khakis being the sole winners.
One can’t, really, rule it out completely that a cabal of thieves desperate to hang on to their power perch would stoop down to any dirty tricks to meet their ends. Nawaz & Co. should know—they are not purblind, after all—that their wiggle room is getting narrower by the hour and shoring up their zero credibility with the people of Pakistan is next to impossible.
And yet they are dishonorable men who wouldn’t bow out by themselves. They will have to be removed—eased out for want of a better expression. And this task, howsoever unpleasant and unsavory, can only be performed, as on many an occasion in the past, by Pakistan’s proverbial ‘third umpire.’
Irrespective of who the author, or authors, of these unsolicited bill boards on the Pakistani street are, it’s symptomatic of a people’s hankering for change—and at the earliest.
For sure, democracy buffs and apologists would cry foul and the mantra of ‘democracy in danger’ will be raised till throats run hoarse. But that begs the question, what’s more important: the country or a faux democracy? Democracy under Nawaz—or, for that matter under Zardari before him—is no better than a foil for kleptocracy. The choice for any devout Pakistani is easy. Nothing should come before Pakistan and the core interests of its people.
K_K_ghori@hotmail.com
(The writer is a former ambassador and career diplomat)
