Nawaz Sharif has moved fast in his first five months as Prime Minister. He hardly let the ink dry on the long sought after Indus Water Apportionment Accord before announcing the second National Finance Commission (NFC) award. This was no mean feat. But has he been running on a wing and a prayer, sure to trip up sooner or later, or has he achieved a real momentum which will carry him through the buffeting to come?
For trouble is sure to come. The budget is still a month away, but people are already grumbling about the price rises in flour, electricity and gas. The Prime Minister’s budget woes ar liable to be compounded by the fundamentalists, who, after their Shariat shock, will be looking for angry crowds to lead on the National Assembly. The hefty interest repayments on foreign loans that will have to be announced by the Finance Minister offer them a powerful and emotive focus for agitation, and they know it.
If the Prime Minister’s aura of stability is a bluff, then the budget must surely call it. his record so far is mixed. The Prime Minister showed maturity in his handling of the tricky Gulf crisis. While all those around him were losing their heads, he offered steady leadership and resisted the temptation of heady populism.
He displayed a grasp of the delicate politics of consensus in engineering the signing of the Indus Water Apportionment Accord and agreement on the NFC awards. While the consensus achieved may have been manimal, Nawaz Sharif has at least got the state’s federal structure working again after years or bickering between the provinces and the centre. But the cost of realistic ambition? That the real issues of the Indus delta and revenue generation have been fudged.
He applied a similar tactic to the Shariat Bill, trying to find an acceptable minimum and fudging the rest. However, as the Prime Minister is discovering, the various fundamentalist parties are not as amenable to such an approach as four tame Chief Ministers.
Where the spirit of tolerance and compromise has been signally lacking has been in his dealings with the opposition PPP. In its place has been an ugly vindictiveness. While the Prime Minister may not be directly responsible for the repression of the PPP, his recent statement reported in Time Magazine that he had not forgotten what Benazir Bhutto has done to him while she was Prime Minister but that he “would like her to help me forget it” displayed either a total lack of sensitivity or else spite for a woman whose husband, however deservedly, is on trial for capital offenses and who must herself face regular court appearances on politically motivated charges.
Persecuted in Sindh and with its leaders hounded through courts across the country, the PPP sometimes threatens to act with the irresponsibility of a party that feels it has nothing left to lose. Talk among some PPP leaders of agitating against any agreement with the US on the nuclear and aid issues is a sign of their desperation. So is the possibility that the PPP will try to block the labour shedding that must be consequences of any successful privatisation drive. This desperation can only rebound on the Prime Minister.
For political stability is the sine quoa non of Nawaz Sharif’s economic policies. Even universally hailed measures such as the easing of foreign exchange controls could end up damaging the economy if investors feel that Pakistan is returning to a period of political turbulence. Reforms aimed at facilitating capital inflows could just as easily pave the way for a massive flight of capital.
Belatedly, Nawaz Sharif seems to be recognising this. Tentative efforts are being made to end the isolation of the PPP. It has returned to the assemblies and its MNAs have been inducted onto committees constituted to report on the Shariat bill and to investigate the repression in Sindh. Hopefully the Prime Minister has come to recognise the importance of a “loyal opposition” — not that the PPP has given much sign of being one, but as yet it hasn’t been given the chance.
As the Prime Minister’s economic policies begin to erode the privileges of the bureaucracy, as they surely must, his reliance on the National Assembly will increase. Sections of the establishment which have long treated the state sector as their own fiefdom, deriving power and advantage from it, will not give up their influence easily. And that influence has political clout. Only if the Prime Minister has a cross party body of opinion behind him can he hope not to be moved on, or out.
A National Assembly with a cooperative opposition will also help to diffuse popular resentment as the bitter medicine of job losses and price increases slowly purges the economy of the excesses of the past decades. If the Prime Minister can move from a relationship of antipathy with the opposition to one that recognises the consensus that they share, he will surely have proved his political weight. And given himself the momentum to push part the hurdles that will be put in his way.