A week is a long time

It all began on Friday last when at Gujranwala our three-time former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, decided to name names. Which was okay except that he literally sounded the war horns against the generals and the army which he felt was behind his ouster from power in 2017 after four years in tenure. Actually his removal was ordered by the Supreme Court of Pakistan and his party continued in power under another prime minister but as in all such instances there is a living assumption that the army lurks somewhere behind. And a year lost is a year lost.

Midweek, Nawaz Sharif’s excitable son-in-law, Captain Retired Safdar Awan, took up the slack and made the moment from as inane and sedate an occasion as visiting the mausoleum of the Father of the Nation, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, which is usually a somber and a formal affair marked by silent prayers in respect of the Great Leader. Maryam Nawaz had desired to visit the grave on her visit to Karachi and Safdar went a bit overboard with his passionate chants on the occasion. Laws restraining conduct and behaviour at the mausoleum were violated in the process which caused a minor outrage but that got PML-N’s political opponents excited enough to demand action against Sharif’s son-in-law for criminalising the occasion. The police including the IG refused to register a complaint since an eminent political figure was involved. What has followed since is both comic as well as tragic.

Back to the Nawaz Sharif speech in Gujranwala. He had spoken thrice before on similar lines but to smaller audiences within his party circles. The first one where he addressed an opposition’s All Parties’ Conference was surprisingly permitted by the government to be aired to the nation — later speeches were not. That was his first hard blow against country’s military establishment after a long gap of solitude. Not as stinging as the one in Gujranwala but direct enough to make the army the only focus of his unreserved tirade. He was on to something. There was a method to this madness. Many assumed it was his counter-blow when some promises were left unfulfilled by the ‘establishment’ even when he had largely stuck to the ‘deal’ quietly biding his time in London on a medical bail from prison, law and the courts. Something gave and he erupted. There are other possible underlying reasons but those remain speculative.

Nawaz’s speeches aren’t innocent undertakings. These are the times of handing the torch over to the next generation in political households and real inheritors of the political mantle are in place. With both Shahbaz Sharif and Hamza in long judicial custody — courtesy NAB intervention — the field is open for Maryam to assert her eminence and rule the reins. Even when SS is out, despite being the President of the Party he may not have much relevance with so much political water flown under the bridge. It is thence that Nawaz Sharif, in a well-considered plan, decided to get even as well as hope to level the playing field for the next generation. Implicitly, it might also open the political space by pushing back some in an army-PTI hybrid order. It isn’t as foolhardy as it seems.

Mian Sahib has his own set of problems. To begin with he is out of practical politics. A proclaimed offender by the courts he will only come back when he can find total amnesty and complete absolution form conviction, sentence or indictment. Which is like the mother of all NROs whether that comes through some legislative clemency or exoneration by arrangement. Or if anarchy can be built to that level the army may be forced to intervene as of the fore dislodging the current dispensation paving for another triumphant return of democracy which literally washes all sins courtesy a bigger sin. If not he isn’t coming back. Call it then his last-ditch manoeuvre.

Nawaz Sharif’s framing of the country’s army too has a history. Having been the one to appoint most chiefs he also has the ignominy of falling out with most if not all. He has sacked a chief, attempted to sack another one, seen one die in office, and been at odds with all except the one who first brought him into power. Democracy and ideology are only recent fads. Given to authoritarian control of the state and governmental institutions he has always struggled with other power structures, whether the military or the judiciary. Such intrinsic predilection has always soured his tenures bringing most to an early end. He isn’t much of a conformer to democratic tradition and is blamed for overt compromise of the bureaucracy and the police. Clearly the next generation in the party shall have to do better to restore their and party’s credibility as indeed ensure democracy’s longevity.

Through his speeches he has made the army a party to this three-way fight. The country is without its usual arbiter, hence. Courts too haven’t escaped his scathe. Capt Safdar’s brief apprehension led to a mayhem when it seemed everyone was against everyone else. This was anarchist when the state, law or the courts were not in control. Who played whom here? Did the PPP stage the act to keep the PML-N pitched against the army in a debilitating tussle? Or, did someone outside of the political players enact the scene to create rifts in the PDM to weaken it through distrust of each other? Or, was the whole thing framed by the political opposition to corner the army even further to reinforce their narrative of institutional overreach? Or, did someone in the security establishment really screw up giving a chance to the political opposition to build on the story further and malign army’s image in public perception? In the bargain, the Centre and the province came to a confrontation as did the institutions briefly. What bankruptcy and moral depravity.

When the government permitted open transmission of Nawaz’s speech it too wasn’t playing naive. Knowing what trap he will fall into the government found this an opportunity to expose him to the people and to those in the army the government thought were holding out an olive leaf to him. IK’s impulse for him to be repeatedly heard was to poke holes in Nawaz’s plan of finding his way back to power using the same shoulders which he now abused when out of power. If ever there was any empathy for Nawaz within the military it vanished in thin air courtesy his impulse and venom. As the political space opens in the tenure of a faltering government Nawaz has lost an important plank for leveraging advantage.

Make your pick. This is the classic case of being defeated by an enemy without a shot being fired. Hail Sun Tzu. Such is the engendering chaos and turmoil. A nation so badly embroiled in self-created lusty wanderings of intrigue has only itself to blame. We are in that state when all tasked to mind the state and its people are at war with each other. This was a week of high drama and low politics. Despicable.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 25^th, 2020.

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