The government has used a sledge hammer to try and swat a fly. In the process it has trampled over the media, locked up politicians, roughed up protestors, blocked streets, barricaded the airport, disrupted flights, and cocked a snook at the judiciary. It’s not looking good, is it? Shahbaz Sharif has been catapulted into the popular imagination beyond his wildest dreams. He will come to haunt his detractors and they will come to rue their ham fisted approach.
The Sharifs have time and again proved themselves to be a most cunning and duplicitous political family. Their meteoric rise in the 1980s was owed as much to mock humility and sham obsequiousness at the altar of the civil-military establishment as to base financial shenanigans. However, once in power, they turned on the very army chief (Asif Nawaz) who as Chief of General Staff had helped thwart the destabilizing moves of his boss (Aslam Beg). Then they focused their sights on a president of Pakistan (Ghulam Ishaq Khan) who had conspired to install them into power. When the gambit backfired, they sidled up to another president (Farooq Leghari), nudging him to pave the way for their re-entry into the corridors of power. Before long, however, they allied with another army chief (Jehangir Karamat) to show their second presidential benefactor to the door. A year later they sacked their second military benefactor. Soon, however, they were conspiring to oust their third army ally (Pervez Musharraf) by stroking the ambitions of his subordinates. And if it hadn’t been for a combination of unforeseen circumstances, coupled with a bad selection of the proposed new army heiracrhy, they would have succeeded in their conspiracies. In the latest episode, they have played their cards shrewdly again.
The Sharifs agreed to a ten year exile in exchange for political clemency. It was a desperate deal for desperate men in desperate times. Like all such past deals, it was bound to be retracted. But General Musharraf didn’t formulate a good strategy to counter them. In the event, they have gained valuable mileage while he is looking like a political novice obsessed with mere survival rather than positive longevity. How’s that?
The Sharifs tested the waters by means of a two phase, two track policy: In phase one- track one they tried to loosen the bonds of their “agreement” by sending members of their family to Pakistan on one pretext or another; in phase one-track two, they tried to create and exploit the perception that Shahbaz Sharif had no hand in the Get-Musharraf coup of 1999 so that General Musharraf could be “softened up” and an opening created for Shahbaz. This strategy succeeded to such an extent that Shahbaz was able to “escape” Saudi Arabia last year for America with the covert “blessings” of General Musharraf. In Phase two-track one, Shahbaz Sharif built a new media image for himself as a great nationalist and patriot and administrator who was dying to return home and face the consequences. These tactics also bore fruit when General Musharraf began to toy with the idea of making up with Shahbaz on the condition that he should make a clean break with Nawaz. Emboldened, the Sharifs launched phase two-track two – Nawaz would maintain a stunning silence while Shahbaz would gear up a media campaign to return to his beloved country and face the consequences. Accordingly, the media was wound up and an appropriate reference made to the Supreme Court. The government’s disarray in the face of this cunning Sharifian strategy was reflected in myriad hot and cold ways. The stage was set, the audience was assembled and the spotlights were turned on for friend and foe.
Shahbaz Sharif was once a political minnow in the shadow of his demagogic brother Nawaz Sharif. He struggled to create a political career for himself while Nawaz was first CM Punjab and then PM Pakistan. But it wasn’t until 1997 that Nawaz relented under his father’s pressure to make Shahbaz CM Punjab. But since two swords couldn’t be jointly sheathed, Nawaz kept the reins of the Muslim League firmly in his own hands, relegating Shahbaz to the position of a glorified provincial administrator instead of allowing him to manufacture a popular political constituency of his own.
But all that has changed now. With Nawaz out of the reckoning, the Sharifs have successfully manufactured Shahbaz as a courageous and clever politician in the popular imagination. The idea also is that since Shahbaz doesn’t carry the opprobrium attached to Nawaz in many Pakistani minds, especially to those in the civil-military establishment and the independent media, he will be an ideal candidate to flog after General Musharraf has been inevitably hoist by his own petard and his covenant with the Sharifs is no longer valid.
After Nawaz and Benazir, we now have two new “courageous heroes-in-waiting”: Asif Zardari and Shahbaz Sharif. Whatever General Pervez Musharraf may say and feel and do, the fact is that more than ever the future belongs to the mainstream PPP and PMLN. The sooner he accepts this fact and realigns himself on the basis of ground realities rather than personal dislikes, the better for himself and for Pakistan.