PM: the weakest link in the state apparatus

A hashtag trending on Twitter says #PrimeMinisterNawazSharif. What is this hangover about the post of the prime minister? Why is the PML-N eager to have Nawaz Sharif back in the saddle when he cannot?

The job of the Pakistani prime minister hangs on the sword. No prime minister has been sure when the sword’s balance will tilt against him/her and drop them out of the race.

No prime minister has been able to prevent this fall, either. As a consequence, no prime minister has completed his/her democratic tenure in office. The prime minister’s post is, therefore, the riskiest in the country.

A person who apparently seems all-powerful is actually at the mercy of the so-called one-page alliance. In case the alliance is not achieved or weakens, the damage inflicted could range from outright rejection to tearing the future prospect of the incumbent ever to assume the office, as it happened in the case of Nawaz Sharif — hence the undiminished desire to lick the wound.

The balance is too delicate to maintain. It involves sacrificing political wisdom. It also demands complete subjugation to the ally’s actions.

Paradoxically, the balance is also easy to maintain. The prime minister can go about running the country through corrupt practices. (S)he is free to fill his/her personal treasury through illegal selling and buying of government-owned assets, especially land. (S)he can waste billions on official extravaganza. His/her cynical policies can take the country out of the progress race. In short, (s)he can have his/her pudding and eat it too without getting implicated. But not without every bit of his/her action is recorded for future reference, if there is a fallout between the allies, not on account of national interest but because of institutional sparing.

How does this game of balance affect Pakistan’s polity?

When we refuse to take action in time against corruption and hoard it instead for blackmailing, we nurture leaders like Zardari. A betting horse to offset yet another prime minister if (s)he becomes too big for the boot given to wear. Then we have a Senate not of wise people but of those who could make the highest bid on the horse. This game of thrones has been part of Pakistan’s political circus for so long that it has almost become part of both our short-term and long-term memories.

Usually, we place the entire burden of the prime minister’s broken job at the establishment’s door. The truth is that the political parties are to be blamed equally for it because of their division that peaked during the 1990s. The revolving politics of the 1990s, until Musharraf struck down the Constitution and imposed military reign for another eight years in 1998, is the story of opposition knocking at the GHQ doors for a ‘forced’ and ‘engineered’ removal of democratically elected governments.

This corruption-laden system was nevertheless not that difficult to mend.

In the scheme of things, however, a weak and unpredictable governance structure became preferable. It allowed the polity to slip from the political domain into the hands of the absolute power-yielder. As for corruption, we had been carrying this wheelbarrow from one election to another to only convince the voters that the elections are rigged and those who assume office flee the country to advance personal benefits.

Prime Minister Imran Khan had been one of the fiercest supporters of pushing this wheelbarrow. However, of late, he is finding it hard to maintain the grip. The slackening of the grip is being attributed to his lack of understanding of what he is pushing through. The problem is that instead of unloading the burden, he is piling new ones. Such as his insistence on retaining the Chief Minister of Punjab and pursing the economic policies with more of the IMF’s footprints than PTI’s manifesto. Other problems being his penchant to have unelected advisers that has made the civil servants with relevant knowledge redundant. Take a look at Punjab for an endorsement of this view.

Imran’s insistence on playing in the hands of the dead narrative of nationalism in the garb of corrupt mafia has set in a culture of political sparing rather than debate for institutional reform. The resolve to reform the police and judiciary and to take on the hoarders identified in the sugar commission is eagerly awaited to be accomplished. Convinced that every Pakistani politician, other than those in his party, are corrupt Imran has exacerbated his decline. A glimpse of which was seen in the latest twist of events when he had to seek, right midway in his tenure, a vote of confidence from the National Assembly. Thought to be one of the powerful prime ministers, because of the one-page alliance intact, not many had expected this bend in a curve. It happened, nevertheless.

The prime minister’s office would remain an enactment from the Victorian age of a useless elite feeding into a dead system, unless the power-yielders, instead of creating leaders, let the system produce them.

To start with, they should reassess the wheelbarrow of corruption dispassionately.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 11^th, 2021.

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