PAKISTAN, AFTER SHARIF
THE FORMER PAK PM FACES CONVICTION, BUT CONTINUES TO CONFRONT THE ESTABLISHMENT. WILL HIS DYNASTY SPLIT, OR WILL HE TRIGGER A COUP, IN THE IMMINENT TURMOIL?
It’s not coup season in Pakistan. Not yet.
Yes, the Islamic Republic is in the throes of yet another throbbing civilmilitary crisis. Yes, the Americans are at their throats, the IMF is at their door, the Chinese are in their pantry, and ISIS is in their basement.
And yes, Pakistan is in an unprecedented political and administrative mess, with complex constitutional, economic and security turmoil on the horizon.
As the top leadership is gridlocked in a legal and political power struggle primarily revolving around the fate of ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his family, the nuclear-armed Chinese ally is suffering through what many observers are calling a governance crisis that could spill over into any of the following scenarios: A fresh election. A judicially-driven political purge. Macroeconomic insolvency and bankruptcy. An interim, technocratic government. A new wave of terrorism. Even a tense standoff, or worse, with India, perhaps even with the US.
But there’ll be no coups here, for now. That’s because the judges are the new generals, and the generals are the new democrats. As for the democrats—the real ones—they are all at war, with everyone, even themselves. Most at stake, politically, is the fate of country’s longest ruling dynasty.
FIRST FAMILY, FAMILY FIRST
After his disqualification from office by the Supreme Court in July for undeclared income, it was generally thought that Nawaz Sharif would just go away; disappear into the sunset; retire to his favourite borough in London; even make way for his efficient brother, Shehbaz, the workhorse chief minister of the mighty Punjab that the Sharifs have controlled almost entirely since they were sired into the political mainstream by the Zia military regime in the ’80s.
After a smooth byelection, it was imagined, Shehbaz would duly take over the party and, of course, the premiership, and general elections would be held as scheduled by next summer. Then, it was surmised, the best party would win, and most probably, a coalition would replace the Sharifs’ robust Pakistan Muslim League–Nawaz (PML-N), which would naturally flounder without the “N” at the helm.
If they were lucky, the ‘other’ Sharifs—part of Nawaz & Co.—would cower in exile, probably self-imposed, or face the wrath of the 18 or so accountability cases coming their way.
None of the above has stood true. In what has been a mostly well-managed show of remarkable perseverance— or calibrated stubbornness and staggered confrontation— it’s not just the three-time prime minister, but the entire former first family that refuses to relent.
First, in August, Nawaz led a state-sponsored “homecoming” rally, leaving Islamabad in a convoy of hundreds, and building momentum into the thousands as he travelled through the politically important artery that is Punjab’s GT [Grand Trunk] Road.
He arrived at Lahore in style, collecting political supporters as he trudged along for days, and finally, openly challenged what “they” had done to him, minting what would
become his party’s new battle cry: “Why was I removed?”
Clearly, a new anti-establishment narrative—Mujhe kyoon nikala?—was born. The military wasn’t expecting the beginning of resurgence. The judiciary had to bite its lip. Meanwhile, the opposition was caught napping.
Led by a relaxed Imran Khan, who had retired victorious into the mountains of pleasant Nathiagali after months of being the vanguard of the Panama Leaks trial that finally did away with Sharif, the anti-Nawaz camp never presented a counter-narrative, assuming that all this was a condemned man’s last dance. In those heady monsoon days, no one challenged Sharif in the run-up to a political comeback. The complacency would be costly.
By September, the initiative was with Nawaz, who had rubbished the old war plans. Shehbaz was ignored—some said he was too close to the military, others said he was required to keep things running in the Punjab, the only vote bank that matters in Pakistan—as Nawaz chose his ailing wife, Kulsoom, to run in his stead in the symbolically and politically crucial byelection in Lahore for the parliamentary seat snatched from him by the courts.
Federally, a master move promising consistency was being executed: A diligent loyalist, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi—a UCLA grad geeky enough for the prime minister’s office, confident enough for the army and the Americans, but too anaemic to challenge Nawaz (he hails from a humble constituency in the foothills of Murree), was made stand-in premier. Thus, the new boss was the same as the old boss, and though taller, the low-profile Abbasi openly claimed he was still reporting to Nawaz.
While the former first lady convalesced in London— receiving chemotherapy for cancer—she won the allimportant byelection in September by a less than expected margin. But the real contender to arrive on the scene was the PML-N’s new campaign manager, Maryam— Nawaz’s eldest daughter and spearhead of the PML-N’s sophisticated but bellicose media machine—who has now emerged as her father’s true heir apparent.
Maryam delivered the byelection—barely, said her critics, with Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) nipping at the PML-N’s heels—but managed to raise enough concerns about transparency, “missing” workers, and what she and her machine clearly implied was the military-backed injection of the Milli Muslim League (the new political face of the Hafiz Saeed run Jamaat-ud-Dawa) and the Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah party (an offshoot of a hardline, pro-Blasphemy Law religious movement from Lahore).
The sudden cameo of the two new right-wing parties, both Punjab-centric, managing to shave off a good 15,000 votes from Maryam’s campaign, raised alarms across the liberal and not-so-liberal political spectrum. Had the ISI’s ‘political wing’ bared it teeth? Or were the mullahs on autopilot, capitalising on their organic support base in Lahore?
The debate was settled by Maryam before it really brewed. Even though the PML-N nailed the election, she and her media machine slammed the establishment in a not entirely demure way for parachuting jihadists into the political mainstream. A tough side was apparent: even as
victor, she was not in the mood to be gracious. Soon enough, by mid-September, it was all very clear: with the GT Road rally and the Lahore byelection blowing the wind in their sails, the former first family would not give up, nor give in, and would do what needed to be done for a political comeback.
THE GIRL (IN THE PALACE) NEXT DOOR
They say she barely has the traces of a confident stateswoman, like Benazir Bhutto. They allege she’s going to be nothing more than a sideshow, like Fatima Jinnah. They slam her democratic credentials for idolising Queen Rania of Jordan, and even gossip about the ‘work’ she’s gotten done to look the way she looks. But Maryam, no doubt, is the new Nawaz.
She has inherited her father’s anti-establishment credentials, as well as his demand for total subordination and loyalty. Even after his ouster, she serves as his chief of staff, while commanding a bevy of ministers and bureaucrats who serve at her pleasure. She’s passive-aggressive in her body language, articulates excellent sound bites for TV, and creates firestorms on Twitter. She dresses conservatively enough for the crowds, but is presentable enough for the drawing rooms to rave and the Whatsapp groups to rant about. And her media machine, well-oiled and ready to rumble, works in clicks and trends, second only to the military’s own.
More importantly, Maryam wants to get back in the Islamabad power game that she, her father, brothers and husband have been pushed out of via multiple indictments. Currently, she’s all but blaming the military openly for being behind her father’s judicial ouster, but she’s missing a smoking gun. Still, she persists in upping the ante and heating things up by a degree per week, with her ministers in the flanks ready to cover her tracks, politely reporting on the talk show circuit and parliament that “there is no conspiracy” against the House Sharif, while Maryam—completely unofficially, and without any proper portfolio—manages to become the face of a government-in-opposition, if not under siege.
However, as a columnist recently noted, Maryam’s also managed to split the Sharifs in half. From being the other side of the family, she now represents the family on the other side. Meanwhile, as the government is blamed for bungling governance, Shehbaz—officially still aligned with his brother, and not showing the political spine to take over from him and/ or Maryam despite rumblings from within—continues to be denied what pundits are calling a central, federally-powered position Maryam has imagined for just her father, and in his stead, herself: with Daddy’s permission, of course.
COMEBACK, CONCESSION, CONVICTION?
In Pakistan’s Punjab, they call fratricide ‘Shareeka’. It stems from angling for what’s owed to you. But Shehbaz and Nawaz—even though their adversaries have often called them Mughals for their grandiosity—are no Aurangzeb and Dara Shikoh. The elder Sharif—his brother told me in an interview last week, word for word—is still the boss. For many who want the system to move on, that’s a serious problem.
In early October, Nawaz staged an unexpected constitutional comeback—regaining official control of his rightof-centre PML-N through a controversial amendment bulldozed through parliament, giving him another tool to reclaim political legitimacy annulled by the courts—but the Lion of Punjab still faces over a dozen pending corruption cases. Still, even as the indictments roll in thick and fast for him and his family, Sharif is not ready to concede.
Currently, Sharif’s return to Pakistan is delayed. Further indictments are imminent. On Monday, however, he decided to make an unannounced trip to visit his old friends, the royals of Saudi Arabia, only to return to London (army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa made a similar, unannounced trip to Saudi Arabia last week, and no details were released by General Headquarters about that). However, even as Sharif’s conviction seems more possible now than ever before, and his legal fate remains doomed by even the most optimistic estimates, his control over the government is not lapsing, albeit at the expense of the larger scheme.
A case in point: Sharif’s brother-in-law, Ishaq Dar, who is the finance minister and the man in charge of Pakistan’s faltering economy. Dar was indicted in September on corruption charges, and his assets were seized last weekend by the courts, all while the World Bank produced a report doubting Pakistan’s macroeconomic stability, the IMF chiming in with similar alerts for good measure, and the stock market tanking. The din was so loud that the issue of the teetering economy was even raised by the mostly politically correct army chief, General Bajwa.
For weeks, all the above factors have prompted the opposition to ask for Dar’s resignation, but it is yet to come, even as the wily finance minister is blamed for mismanaging the country’s finances. Reportedly and visibly, he’s lost more than 20 kilos in less than a couple of months since his trial picked up steam, but Dar’s resilience is emblematic of the Sharifs’ defiance against the system. They have managed to stay in power, and behave like a rebellion, at the same time.
“The government seems to be working on a single-point agenda: undermining state institutions to protect the Sharifs from law,” says Sakib Sherani, a former advisor to the government who also runs a macroeconomic consultancy. “All other challenges to the country—failing economy, rising regional and geopolitical pressures—have been left unaddressed.”
Meanwhile, Shehbaz, the would-be heir apparent, faces his own money-laundering and murder charges. Notably, those cases are on the backburner, spurring debate that he’s being ‘given’ extra leeway to get his house in order, take over from his brother, stop the looming confrontation with the establishment and make things right.
THE ENDGAME
“We have three goals,” said a senior PML-N minister, on condition of anonymity, hours before Nawaz’s last indictment. “One, we don’t want the party to break up, or be broken up, by the likes of the ISI. Two, we want to survive till the senate elections in March. Three, we don’t want Mian [Nawaz Sharif] Sahib to get convicted.”
Of those goals, the March 2018 senate election is the most constitutionally crucial. If the PML-N government makes it, it’ll control both the upper and lower houses for the first time since the ’90s. On achieving that aim, amendments to cut the army and judiciary to size—extreme measures are already discussed brazenly in PML-N parlours— may be passed before the assemblies are dissolved and the next general election announced. Thus, March is a deadline looming for all and sundry, not just a hundred senators.
But what’s not clear is how the PML-N will proceed, and how it will be allowed to proceed, till then.
Will Nawaz opt to return to Pakistan, go through due process and risk jail (remember, he’s touching 70 soon?) Will Maryam stay on and risk the same? Will Shehbaz peel away from his elder brother’s shadow, and ‘cut a deal’ to not suffer a similar legal plight? Will the opposition—led by a legally challenged but not encumbered Imran Khan— stand for such a deal, or hit the streets in protest? Will the PML-N reorganise under Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, who’ll transform from stand-in PM to something larger—his foreign office is already thoroughly aligned with the brass, presenting a united civil-military front in meetings with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Islamabad this week while rejecting Delhi’s naming of an interlocutor for talks with Kashmiri leaders, hours after the announcement, and all in the same day. Also, if this governance-in-opposition model pushed by the Nawaz camp becomes untenable, and/ or the Af-US-India policy cracks, will Abbasi bow out, timidly making the way for an interim government of technocrat professionals? Or, will a new dark horse emerge from within the ranks of the political, or the not-so-political establishment?
Remember, the judges are the new generals. “Judicial intervention into executive functions is visible at various levels,” says Mosharraf Zaidi, a former advisor to the foreign ministry. “These interventions enjoy high levels of public confidence, partly because of the potency of the narrative of political corruption and executive inefficiency. Judges will continue to gain greater legitimacy for their interventions in the absence of executive performance.”
Thus, Pakistan will go on. But the current dispensation might not. Not if the hon’ble courts keep the gavels handy.
IN WHAT’S BEEN A MOSTLY WELL MANAGED SHOW OF REMARKABLE PERSEVERANCE, NOT JUST NAWAZ BUT THE ENTIRE FORMER FIRST FAMILY HAS REFUSED TO RELENT