Pakistani
Generals arrogant stupidity makes Nawaz Sharif rise as a heroic fighter for
democracy
HUSAIN HAQQANI 14 July, 2018
Sharif’s imprisonment will not end his
political career and will outlast the retirement of generals and colonels who
plotted his downfall.
Nawaz Sharif’s decision to return to Pakistan and go to
prison marks a new phase in the country’s politics. Sharif had been a creature
of the establishment in the first phase of his political life and only a
cautious opponent of the establishment since 1993. He has now become the first
Punjabi politician to defy the predominantly Punjabi establishment in ways
previously associated with leaders of Pakistan’s smaller ethnic groups.
The subject of this article is not Sharif’s
flaws or merits, but the future of Pakistan’s politics. Pakistani politicians
have often allowed the military-led establishment to maintain a façade of
civilian democratic rule while calling most of the shots.
Sharif’s decision to accept prison instead of
staying in exile shocked the establishment, which had assumed that the fear of
prison would be enough to take Sharif out of politics. After all, the old
Sharif had accepted the option of going into exile after being toppled from
power by the 1999 military coup. That decision helped avoid prolonged
confrontation and enabled the survival of General Pervez Musharraf’s military
regime.
Sharif’s return this time forced the
establishment to unleash repression on a large scale, ending the veneer of
benign authoritarianism. Hundreds of Sharif supporters were arrested
pre-emptively. His 85-year-old mother was detained. Traffic into Lahore, the
capital of Punjab, was virtually shut down.
Television coverage of Sharif’s return and the
planned reception was severely censored. Mobile telephone networks were
interfered with to deny people access to social media. And the flight of an
international airline carrying the former prime minister from Abu Dhabi to
Lahore was delayed, amid efforts to divert it, to deny even the slightest
visual contact between Sharif and his supporters.
For millions of Pakistan Muslim League (PML)
voters, Sharif’s conviction on corruption charges is just not credible. But for
many others who were not his supporters before and recognised his flaws, he is
now the symbol of defiance to an arrogant and overbearing establishment.
“Who are the judges and generals to decide who
will represent us? If our elected leaders are corrupt, we want the right to
vote them out” seems to be the dominant sentiment that transcends feelings for
Sharif or his family.
Pakistan’s failure to evolve as a democracy
under the rule of law with strong institutions and its governance by a
civil-military oligarchy creates an air of permanent political crisis that is
likely to be heightened by Sharif’s imprisonment.
Members of the oligarchy jockey for power
through intrigue, rumour and whispering campaigns. Popular politicians are kept
out of the political arena or forced to make compromises that subordinate them
to military officers and civil servants. Almost every Pakistani head of state
and government since independence in 1947 has been imprisoned, assassinated,
executed or removed from power in a military coup or a palace coup backed by
the military.
In the country’s unfortunate history,
governments have sometimes been voted into office but none have been voted out.
The country’s generals and their offspring feel comfortable only with
technocrats and civil servants who have grown up in the Government Officers’
Residences (GOR) and cantonments.
An entire class of Pakistanis resents ‘the
riff-raff’ that votes and believes in ‘the national narrative’ that puts the
army on a pedestal, amid many myths about Pakistan’s origins and place under
the sun.
As early as 1954, General Ayub Khan wrote a
memo titled ‘A short appreciation of present and future problems of Pakistan’,
which laid out a top-down agenda for forging a Pakistani nation through the
leadership of the existing apparatus of the state. While it lays out in detail
the administrative measures necessary for making Pakistan “ a sound, solid and
cohesive nation…able to play its destined role in world history”, it has no
reference whatsoever to the will of the people or to political participation.
Unfortunately for Pakistan, Ayub Khan’s
paradigm of considering the military as the ultimate decision-makers and the
virtual raison d’être of Pakistan has persisted. Every now and then a
politician has gained popularity but the military has been able to use his or
her weaknesses to its advantage. Thus, ‘Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was intolerant of
opposition,’ ‘Benazir Bhutto presided over a corrupt and incompetent
administration,’ and ‘Nawaz Sharif is a creature of the establishment who loves
the comforts of life.’
But after four coups and many more indirect
interventions, Pakistan’s establishment is far from delivering the stability
and progress it seeks to deliver through its machinations. It is unlikely to
succeed this time either.
Politics is often described as the art of the
possible and governance is considered a function of politics. Good governance
means the art of administering the state successfully within the parameters of
attainable and realistic objectives. Anyone trying to set everything right at
the same time might be pursuing a dream. Such pursuits can neither be termed as
practical politics nor can they be the basis of good governance.
Moreover, military officers are used to
dealing with regimented minds. The troops under their command ask no questions
while obeying orders. When called upon to command civilians, military men find
it difficult to deal with constant debates and disagreements as well as the
numerous options put forward with equal eloquence. The diversity of civilian
issues is the most important characteristic of running a government. Pakistan’s
soldier-rulers and their civilian dependents refuse to learn the lesson
that the profession of soldiering provides insufficient training for the task
of governance.
This time, the script for ‘saving Pakistan’
differed little from previous such efforts. It was expected that once the
Supreme Court disqualified Sharif, his support would evaporate and his party
would desert him. Then the establishment’s favorites, including former
cricketer Imran Khan (who is described since his Oxford University days as ‘Im
the Dim’) were expected to win an election widely seen as free and fair.
Pakistan was to live the happily ever after.
But Sharif’s party did not desert him and the
few locally influential leaders who did had to be coerced in manners that could
not be concealed. The army and the ISI decided to deal with the media in a
heavy-handed way, with specific instructions about whom to favour and whom to
oppose in the election campaign. This, too, could not remain secret.
Other exertions of the military-intelligence
combine on behalf of its preferred candidates included calling up candidates
with vote-banks to leave the PML, Altaf Hussain’s Muttahida Qaumi Movement
(MQM), or the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), and join the PTI or other smaller
pro-establishment factions. Insolent politicians faced corruption charges and
some were even disqualified while the obedient ones were protected and promised
rewards.
In cantonment life, an adverse order from a
superior officer ends or diminishes careers but in politics repression and
persecution only engenders sympathy. Through its ham-fisted approach, the
Pakistani establishment has made the public forget their complaints against Nawaz
Sharif and his daughter, Maryam. Instead, the father and daughter will now be
seen as symbols of defiance in an establishment that has consistently
undermined Pakistan’s evolution as a democracy.
Even if the military succeeds in installing a
selected prime minister into office after the votes are cast on July 25, it
will not succeed in its core objective of creating a credible, effective,
civilian façade. Sharif’s imprisonment will not end his (or his daughter’s)
political careers long after the retirement of the generals and colonels who
plotted his downfall. Soldiers should remain soldiers. Politics is more
difficult than locating and liquidating enemies.
Husain Haqqani,
director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute in Washington D.C.,
was Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States from 2008-11. His latest book is
‘Reimagining Pakistan.
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