Double or quits

For 3 weeks while civil-military strife played out on television, on pages of most newspapers, Nawaz remained silent.

Berkshire Hathaway is the most famous investment company of the American multi-billionaire Warren Buffet. Each of his investments is a steady, deliberate read of the emerging market. He invests with responsibility and treats his capital on behalf of his investors with utmost care; never cavalier or irresponsible. That is why each of his portfolios is a certain winner. He also abhors risk and will invest among safe players in the market; after all it is someone else’s money that he has been entrusted responsibility for. Buffet believes in incremental winners and builds over time. Reading and managing risks in investment not only informs of the quality of the investment player, it also defines his prudence in the game that he plays. Warren Buffet is not only a successful investor, a sure-shot winning entrepreneur, but also a guru to whom the world goes for sane advice. He is to economics of both money and life what a statesman is to politics.



When the PML-N came into power it brought along with it a certain ‘political capital’; a kind of ‘seed money’ to begin with. Usually, all mandates are ‘political capital’, but in an era of divided polities along numerous party lines, to come out with a majority — not a coalition majority — was not simply a ‘seed fund’ but a hefty bonus. Nawaz Sharif (NS) came with such a bonus and a political capital. Thereon it was up to NS to decide where to invest. As the PM, it was reasonably assumed that such investment would be for the greater good of its stakeholders — the nation that chose him.

As for the late Benazir Bhutto, it was assumed that NS too had learnt from his past mistakes and missteps; that he had now ‘matured’. From being an impulsive young man seeking immediate gratification, he would now not only traverse the political minefield with care, he would be deliberate and inclusive in how he marshaled this hapless nation forward, warts and all. Surely, there wasn’t a chance of ever going back to the decade of the 1990s; that this nation had paid its wages in its past follies and deserved to move ahead with the times. There was this hope that was attached to NS’ return to power.

Armed with his ‘political capital’ then, he could have chosen to invest spare political capacity to restructure the economy — and that in itself is a huge canvas, from enlarging the tax base to placing a vision of his preferred triggers to rejuvenate a flaccid economy; or develop a regional consensus on how to manage the emerging geopolitics after Afghanistan reverts to its independent status post-2014; or to fighting terrorism and rid Pakistan of the menace that unfortunately has found roots among its sociopolitical milieu.

He chose to do all and invested across the board, which is noble enough; unfortunately though, when you spread your investments thin you may profit only incrementally and never win large. For a larger win, the trick is to keep the investment going long — that is a factor of time. More than the quantum it is perseverance that reaps profits in the end. Warren Buffet has taught so to the world.

What the PM did, however, was that he invested heavily in — to the point of exhausting his ‘political capital’ — attempting to correct the distortions in the civil-military equation. While this may have been a popular avenue to invest in, it was akin to gambling on a ‘double-or-quits’ option. Such an option is the final play of a desperate gambler. Most seemed going well for Mian Sahib? Why would he then venture out on the risky road? Who pushed him on that road?

Mian Sahib has had all going for him. A lackadaisical opposition; a chosen army chief; a mandate that literally empowers him to do as he pleases; existential challenges that enable him to contribute with exemplary leadership and establish his position as the statesman-leader in the country simply by choosing correctly and persisting with the effort to mitigate the looming dangers. Yet, right in his first year of this term, he has practically run his ‘political capital’ out?

The civil-military estrangement almost blew up in the face of this reinstituted political order. For three weeks while the civil-military strife played out on the screens of evening television and on the pages of most newspapers, the PM remained absent sans a word to appease the situation. When two of his ministers went berserk, he chose to bide the interregnum to what had till then been a fairly smooth run. Post-Hamid Mir’s shooting while he visited with the injured Hamid Mir, which was just as well, he failed to offer a word of support for the ISI that is meant to work directly under him and whose chief was fallaciously nominated by a media group as the prime suspect in Mir’s shooting. It almost seemed that the PM had, in no uncertain, terms chosen sides; and it wasn’t the ISI or his military. Building on assumptions of such unfortunate leaning, some government ministers gave word to the visible bias and reinforced the perceptions of serious disconnect between the government and the military. It almost seemed like war. Why go to war?

Again, ‘what took him down that path’? A pathological obsession of a compulsive gambler? There was a thing or two to learn from Asif Zardari in dealing with the army. Zardari went the slow and deliberate path of weaning the power away from the army by first instituting and then nurturing democracy as a parallel plank in the power structure. Buffet would approve of it. NS, inversely, sought immediate recompense and brought the two traditional power players into a direct confrontation. There is also a matter of emergence of other players opening up the possibilities of unhealthy collusion among them. The judiciary and the media are now more resolutely anchored, thanks to their mutual support for each other. ‘Big Money’ too has now entered this diluting apex of power in the country. With a mix as deadly as that, and with non-existent regulatory norms in a nation that remains mired in perpetual crises, the toxicity can only be explosive.

What was inconsequential (Musharraf) and what was exogenous (a private media house’s deviation), now stand unnecessarily internalised and underwrites the government’s relationship with its military. Questions will, thus, remain on government’s intent, capacity and ability to work with its subordinate institutions even as it will need the ISI and the military to find peace and stability within and without. Mian Sahib must endeavour to rediscover institutional harmony even as he works to garner back his lost ‘political capital’. Except that he can ill afford to fritter again his most valuable asset in gainless pursuits.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 3^rd, 2014.

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