Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif

Even when he was exiled and a million miles away from his current office, everyone around him used to call him ‘Mr Prime Minister’ to get his ear. The battery of servants deployed at his Jati Umra residence habitually refer to the place as Prime Minister House. They do so regardless of whether he is the prime minister or not.

He likes the sound of title. He likes keeping it even more. He cannot imagine political life without it. But third time in this seat, Nawaz Sharif is not living his term well. At almost every turn of the past three years he has been challenged, leading the government on the edge. The future does not look brighter than the present and the past.

Of course, he blames everyone else for this state of affairs. – ambitious generals, unscrupulous and scheming opponents and media owners who cut deals for advertisements and push their business interests at the cost of his politics. However, the army has been less kind to the PPP whose ruling family, the Bhuttos, has been ruined by its long feud with the institution. So much so that now the party has Asif Ali Zardari as its head. That is some downfall!

Attempts to dislodge other governments have been no less potent and determined than what Sharif is facing at present. The PPP’s last government had to change its prime minster mid-term to complete its tenure. It had to contend with a Supreme Court chief justice who would not let them breathe. The media onslaught against them was heartless. The disadvantage of being weak in the largest province, Punjab – a weakness Sharif does not face – hamstrung the PPP government even further. So Sharif is no more a victim of seedy politics than he is its beneficiary. As an old hand at the game he should know what it is: nasty, brutish, and Byzantine in spirit and action.

His real problem lies in the manner in which he exercises power and his fondness for keeping everything within the fold of the family. This has created an all-exclusive environment within the party: everyone who is not close to the Sharifs is excluded from being a stakeholder. His party is totally dysfunctional as a political entity as all layers of its organisation are connected directly with the whims and needs of the two brothers, Nawaz and Shehbaz Sharif.

The only decentralisation that has taken place in Punjab is that Shehbaz Sharif’s sons are now sharing the driving seat with their father. At the centre, the only new face in political management that Sharif has introduced happens to be his daughter, Maryam Safdar. Nothing gets done in the party or in the government without one or the other family member (and their handful of cherry-picked associates) endorsing it.

This strategy – of governing so many with so few – is what lies at the root of Sharif’s political troubles. He has not allowed diversity to emerge in the party; there is no reasonable and acceptable alternative within because none has been given the space to bloom. The entire structure of the party is built around the altar of the Sharifs. Worship is welcome. Dissent is detested. This has resulted in a complete stagnation of ideas within the party, whose sole purpose seems to perpetuate the Sharifs’ power and to protect them when they are threatened.

This is disconnected from the massive social and political changes that have taken place in the country, especially in areas where the PML-N has its strongholds. New moneyed classes are breaking the holds of old hands; a new-generation voter has come up – one who is tuned in to his own needs and is aware of the anachronistic nature of family politics. The Sharifs, by living in their own comfort zone, have barred themselves from the pulse of the times. They are remotely connected with the national mood through cronies who pay homage to them not because they are convinced of the Sharifs’ leadership qualities but because the Sharifs control state resources whose access is crucial for local politicians to retain influence in their constituencies.

That is why Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has gone on a project inauguration spree, as the Panama leaks scandal gets thicker. The only way he knows how to conduct politics is by opening the state coffers to areas in crying need of basic facilities. Even the audience that he has granted to his party members after the Panama leaks is basically a conduit for transferring funds to local powerbrokers who, in turn, reaffirm their allegiance to him. There is no ideology at work here because there is no ideology that the Sharifs stand for. Theirs is a kingdom that works on the core principle of ‘give and take’ which, translated in simple language means: ‘I give you funds and I take your politics.’

Then there is the family business that has fed their politics and in return has benefitted from it. The Panama leaks have shed light on the Sharifs’ wealth only for the Facebook generation: for those who have watched the family for a long time, this is no news. Throughout the late 1980s and then more prominently in the 1990s, the nexus of Sharif business with Sharif politics was the most written about subject. Every budget document used to be analysed for hidden policies that allowed their business to get an edge over competitors and every big project was seen from the angle of its intended benefits to their industries.

However, just as they have responded to the Panama leaks now, then too they never bothered to come clean and address deep suspicions about the sources of their wealth and its paranormal growth. What Nawaz Sharif is facing now is not just a below-the-belt attempt by the opposition to bring him down; he is facing all those questions that were asked repeatedly in the last three decades but were never answered. There was always a direct confluence of interest between his politics and business but it was allowed to flourish and there was never any attempt to separate the two.

Now both are under attack because they are seen as the centre of the Sharifs’ gravity and also because both are secretive in nature. Both are constructed around just one family and both are seen as instruments of individuals’ control over a diverse and dynamic political landscape. Nawaz Sharif, being the dean of family politics and business, should have been wiser in handling these matters. He had a great opportunity when he came to power in 2013 to detach his politics from his familial relationships and bring in more transparency in his business matters. He did neither. In fact he did the exact opposite. He tightened his family’s grip over politics and made his business affairs even more impenetrable to scrutiny.

Family-centric politics bred a fortress mentality and caused policy myopia as all debate about critical affairs was confined to conversations around a dinner table set for six. The expanding business raised more questions and even cast shadows on foreign and defence affairs like relations with India, China, Turkey, and the Gulf states.

By any stretch of imagination this is a heavy burden for any government to carry in a challenging political environment. No amount of development work and projects can lighten this burden. Prime Minister Sharif may have his own theories about his current crucible, and some of these theories may not be all that worthless, but the reason he is being targeted is because he has centralised everything around himself and his family. This makes him the bull’s eye of all attacks. His detractors know that if they trump him they trump the entire party.

If Nawaz Sharif had started his third tenure as an accommodating, inclusive politician who could look and think beyond family political interests, and disconnect business from politics, he would have been sitting more comfortably in his office. But he chose the beaten path of monopolistic politics that could have taken him only to the point where he finds himself now.

Email: syedtalathussain@gmail.com

Twitter: @TalatHussain12