If one were to be charitable to Nawaz Sharif, one might say that he is an “enigmatic” leader. He makes sweeping promises which he cannot fulfil. He says one thing today and quite the opposite the next day. Sometimes he talks like a liberal and acts like a reactionary and sometimes it’s vice versa. He is secretive, suspicious and vengeful. he has many bizarre ideas but few sensible ones. He has been at the top of the power pyramid since 1981, yet knows nothing of the art of government. He flaunts a business background, yet remains clueless about the market economy. He hates red tape and bureaucracy, yet most of his advisors and consultants are bureaucrats of one ilk or another. He espouses democracy and gloats over his electoral “mandate”, yet resents the press, loathes the opposition, derides the judiciary and wants to acquire absolute power. He thunders against corruption, yet is corrupt of his bones. He has no time for parliamentary niceties and debates and he has no inclination for cabinet consultations or collective responsibility.
Mr Sharif’s indiscretions would be excusable if their repercussions weren’t so calamitous. His mistakes could be shrugged away if they weren’t such monumental blunders. His initiatives could be forsaken if they weren’t so noxious. Consider the evidence in some critical cases.
Conventional political wisdom suggests that all hard, radical or unpopular economic decisions in the national interest should be taken in the first few months after a political party comes to power so that the fruits of early sacrifice and belt-tightening are harvested in the years approaching the general elections. But Mr Sharif has chosen to do the exact opposite. Now, midway through his blundering term, and faced with economic bankruptcy and political anarchy, he is proposing to reverse the disorder he has engineered, which means that the country has lost a great opportunity for restructuring when things weren’t so dismal and when the opposition wasn’t so united and vociferous.
The nuclear issue, too, could have much better managed if some serious and courageous collective input had been put into it earlier. It was crystal clear that if Pakistan went ahead and tested, crippling international sanctions would be imposed and the economy would face financial default. Why then did it take Mr Sharif eight indecisive months to negotiate an end to the sanctions, during which the economy was set back by a decade at least? If a commitment to sign the CTBT in 1999 and not create any obstacles in the way of the fissile material discussions in Geneva was all that was needed to persuade Washington to lift the sanctions in January 1999 and provide relief, why couldn’t this package have been signed and sealed by Pakistan a day after it tested on May 28th 1998 so that sanctions, and the resultant freeze of foreign currency deposits, loss of domestic and foreign investor confidence, and economic recession could all have been avoided? Indeed, if a harsh IMF package is acceptable today, why wasn’t a more yielding one acceptable in February 1997?
The decision to jump into bed with the MQM in early 1997 was as shortsighted and opportunist as the one to seek divorce from it and unleash the military courts against it in late 1998. One might have also thought, at least, that when the army was roped in to provide military courts and risk unseemly exposure, discreet assurances had already been sought and obtained from the superior judiciary so that the military courts would not be struck down. But no such contingency was envisaged or planned, with the result that the army h as been left holding the bathwater after the baby was thrown out by the supreme court.
Much the same sort of impulsive behaviour is evident from Mr Sharif’s recent attempt at “detente” with India. He sought no interaction with the national security established and offered no explanations or justifications for a change of tack. Indeed, he took no one, not even the cabinet or parliament, into confidence, which is why even the Punjab administration was running around like a headless chicken on February 20th and 21st. Now Mr Sharif is blowing hot and cold all over again and “detente” is enveloped in a cloud of institutional confusion and uncertainty which doesn’t augur well for the initiative.
Mr Sharif is also a very stubborn man. He refuses to learn from his mistakes. The yellow-cabs and Lahore-Islamabad Motorway were disastrous legacies of his first coming. These are to be supplemented this time round by more yellow-cabs, tractors, motorways as well as a Rs 250 billion handout scheme for the “unemployed” and “small-businessmen”. For a cash starved government which cannot balance its budgets and whose public sector financial institutions are bust this is the pinnacle of capricious conduct.
The man is not enigmatic in the least. On the contrary, he is totally predictable. Therefore those who are banking upon him to steer this country out of the woods should think again. There may not be much left to salvage of Pakistan by the time Nawaz Sharif is through with it!