Time for brighter Sharif to come upstage

Sandeep Dikshit

Nawaz Sharif has joined the long list of political leaders who have traded their self-imposed exile for an uncertain future in their native land. It has not always ended well. Closer home, his compatriot Benazir Bhutto’s life and political career ended with a second assassination attempt in two months. Further afield, Benigno Aquino Junior's challenge to the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship ended at the Manila airport itself soon after his arrival.

Nawaz's personality though has shaped differently from Benazir and Aquino Junior. Risk taking came early in his life as he battled the perception that it was his younger brother Shahbaz Sharif who should have taken his place. This was exemplified when in his first stint as Punjab Chief Minister, recalls Imran Khan the man currently best positioned to thwart the return of Nawaz's party to power, that he stunned the sparse crowd by opening the batting for the Punjab Chief Minister's XI against the most lethal pace attack of all times led by Michael Holding and Courtney Walsh. Nawaz Sharif was relieved of serious bodily injury when the second ball fortunately swept away his middle stump. But 31 years later, as he faces up to the thunderbolt from the judiciary, neither luck nor the army are by his side.

Unlike Benazir and Aquino, Sharif had passing acquaintance with the world of scholastics. Add to that, his failures in early life as an actor, a cricketer and a man in uniform (he got as far as civil guard commander) till his indulgent father Mian Muhammed Sharif ingratiated himself with the Punjab Governor. It was Shahbaz who the army wanted to take over as Punjab Finance Minister, but Mian Sharif opted for the elder Nawaz to neutralise the appeal of Benazir Bhutto. While Shahbaz manned the family business and Nawaz played the army's tune, the Zia years were the time when the Sharif family bolstered its political life with a business that has multiplied manifold. With the money in coffers, Sharif beat back Benazir's challenge for Punjab province in 1988 with “Changa-Manga” politics, where People Party of Pakistan legislators were taken by Sharif to a resort by that name in Kasur and offered embellishments, not unlike those offered here in India.

If Sharif had to be arrainged for financial misdemeanour, that should have happened in his first term as PM in 1990. He escaped court approbation by a whisker, though his government was dismissed for “lack of transparency in the privatisation process”. Sharif was to be the PM thrice, each time his term ending prematurely. His nemesis on every occasion was different: the President of Pakistan, the Chief of Army Staff and the Supreme Court Chief Justice, respectively. 

Of the five army chiefs he appointed during his three tenures, he never got along with any one of them. Nawaz Sharif had changed. And he would pay for turning his back on his benefactors who had seeded and nurtured his political career for a decade. 

And in what seems to be nemesis striking back, Sharif has been hung from the petard of an obscure, rarely used rule enshrined during the Zia dictatorship and, doubtless, enthusiastically endorsed by the army's political cheerleaders of that time, including Nawaz Sharif. For the first time, Sharif could manage neither the army nor the judiciary. 

Nawaz is on a weak political wicket. The halo of martyrdom is made of tinsel, for he has been unable to explain the money trail for four flats in a tony London neighbourhood. His daughter and heir apparent Maryam also faces a jail term, for all the registration deeds are in her name.

Perhaps, for the first time in his life, Nawaz may be doing a favour to his brighter sibling Shahbaz who has remained in his shadows despite being one of the longest serving politicians in Pakistan. Having exhausted all legal options for appeal, Nawaz's only hope for freedom and saving his family fortunes from appropriation rests on Sharif Junior.  

 Voting in Pakistan takes place on July 25. Nawaz Sharif cannot afford to remain in jail till he is 79. His only slender hope rests on Shahbaz making his peace with Pakistan's major arbitrator of party preferences — the army — so that it becomes ambivalent towards him and Imran Khan. His only hope for convincing the army to permit a fair contest between him and Imran Khan rests on his proven record of administration, even if lackadaisical, over the completely neophyte former Pakistan cricket captain.

Dirty games have already started in Pakistan. Imran's former wife Reham Khan has fired the first salvo by making the damaging claim of the cricketer having fathered children in enemy country, India. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a candidate from the secular Awami National Party was blown up in Peshawar. For the first time in the 37 years of his political life, Nawaz appears to be in no position to make a comeback. Benazir and Acquino Jr's assassinations brought their spouses to power. Nawaz Sharif's wife is in intensive care. His only hope to return to his kitschy Raiwind farmhouse rests on his younger brother, provided he manages to pull in enough seats. The days of “Changa-Manga” politics is over.

sandeepdixit@tribunemail.com