Mian Nawaz Sharif Earns Another Chance in Pakistan

by M.M. Ali

Pakistan has had four elected governments and three interim administrations within the past eight years. Each of the elected prime ministers was removed prematurely from office on charges of corruption and maladministration by an appointed president, using the now-infamous Eighth Amendment to Pakistan’s constitution.

This year, however, for the first time a government has been formed that commands a clear parliamentary majority. In a National Assembly of 217 members, Mian Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML) captured 138 seats in the elections that were completed on Feb. 3. At the same time Benazir Bhutto’s People’s Party was almost demolished in all of Pakistan’s four provinces, including her own Sindh province. She now sits in a very much shrunken opposition.

This reversal of fortunes when Bhutto had served three years of her five-year term as prime minister began with the souring of her relations with President Farooq Ahmed Leghari, her own nominee. Shi’i-Sunni sectarian killings and the precarious law-and-order situation in Karachi, rumors of rampant corruption in her administration, and above all diminishing foreign exchange reserves caused the president to caution the prime minister.

The caution, according to some knowledgeable Islamabad circles, was scorned by Bhutto. This ultimately led Chief of Staff Gen. Jehangir Karamath to urge the president to dismiss the Bhutto government. President Leghari did so on Nov. 5, 1996, appointing an interim administration and calling for fresh elections within 90 days as required by the constitution. Bhutto was in a fighting mood and challenged the president’s action in a court of law.

In fact, the court had upheld a similar challenge in the previous case of Nawaz Sharif in 1993. Although Bhutto pinned all her hopes on a court-ordered reinstatement, this time the court upheld the president’s action just days before the scheduled elections, making Nawaz Sharif’s election virtually certain.

Politics in Pakistan take different routes for different people. In 1993 Altaf Husain, now in exile in London, ordered his political party, the Mohajir Qaumi Movement of Karachi, to boycott the elections and paid a very heavy political price by losing whatever clout he had in Islamabad. In 1997 there were only two major contenders, Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. Had Benazir chosen to boycott the elections, the Feb. 3 results might have appeared unconvincing. Instead, Bhutto contested the elections and her party was almost wiped out. Her loss was predicted but the magnitude of the disaster was not.

A third candidate, Imran Khan, leader of the newly-formed Tehrik-e-Insaf party and a former captain of Pakistan’s championship national cricket team, was riding a wave of popularity that he hoped might crest in the 1998 elections. The sudden calling of early elections found him not quite ready for prime time. Imran Khan lost in all of the eight different constituencies in which he ran personally, and his party did not win a single seat in the parliament. Sita White, a woman in California who alleged that Khan had fathered her child, also contributed to his electoral debacle.

Elections in the subcontinent can be a long and emotional struggle. Normally campaigns are launched months before the polling date, and contests can be heated. However this year’s elections in Pakistan did not arouse any great public interest, largely because neither Bhutto nor Sharif had compiled previous impeccable records in office. The results showed that a mere 34 percent of the people bothered to vote. This was barely below the 38 percent participation in the 1996 U.S. general elections, but for Pakistan it was an unprecedented low turnout. Nevertheless Pakistani democracy has been given yet another chance.

There seems little question that Nawaz Sharif has won a mandate from the people, since he has secured a comfortable majority in the national assembly. The real question is whether he is up to the challenges, primarily economic, faced by Pakistan today. Has he the will and the ability to restore confidence among the people and to set the house in order, or will his administration end prematurely, as have all the other previous attempts, including his own?

Parochial politics have been the worst enemy in Pakistan. At this writing Sharif has not been able to put together a cabinet, as his supporters jockey for prize portfolios. Making no reference to his difficulty, the newly elected prime minister addressed the nation, soliciting the public’s help and cooperation. He also made a fervent appeal to Pakistanis living abroad to remit foreign exchange deposits into the country, giving them generous and enticing assurances.

“Instead of depending on loans from international agencies and countries for which we go deeper and deeper in debt, my government has decided to rely on our own resources,” he said. These courageous words in a desperate time created an initial positive reaction. Whether this will translate into popular trust in his administration’s fiscal management, only time will tell.

In recent years governments in Pakistan have forfeited the nation’s trust, the integrity of the leaders has been compromised, and most Pakistanis are tired and disgusted. While politicians and bureaucrats have enriched themselves, conditions for the man on the street have changed very little over the country’s 50-year history. Poverty, illiteracy and hunger all remain the major problems facing Pakistan’s newest government.

Washington Discusses Pakistan

Sections of the Western press, not always unfriendly, have started describing Pakistan as a “near failed state.” The alarming label takes on greater significance because, since the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, what’s written in Washington has a great deal to do with how developing countries are perceived and treated everywhere.

An important conference held on Feb. 26, 1997, organized jointly by the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Middle East Institute, provided evidence of how a country in difficult straits becomes a target of public criticism by representatives of a superpower.

The conference was titled: “Pakistan’s Future.” Putting discretion and diplomatic nuance to rest, Robin Raphel, assistant U.S. secretary of state for South Asia, came with a laundry list of specific topics Nawaz Sharif needs to address.

Emphasizing that “trade” and not “aid” would mark the future of U.S.-Pakistani relations, Raphel counseled the new prime minister to work with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to tide Pakistan over its current fiscal problems, initiate a “period of national austerity,” seek ways to collect taxes, launch a basic literacy plan instead of engaging only in tertiary education, and be “forthright with the people.” Secretary Raphel also urged Islamabad to adopt “transparency” in administration. Although she is known for her pungent style, Raphel’s forthright remarks nevertheless were unusual for a serving State Department official.

Reinforcing Raphel, former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Robert Oakley, who has been shuttling between Washington and Pakistan in recent months, observed that recent elections in Pakistan had helped focus on the issue of graft and also had “eased out a number of old fogies.” He was, accordingly, upbeat on the future of Pakistan.

The conference also discussed the Taliban issue in Afghanistan, and American panelists called upon the new Pakistani government to resolve its disputes with India and build some mutually beneficial economic ties.

This, in fact, seemed to be happening in the subcontinent. Both Prime Minister Dev Gowda of India and Mian Nawaz Sharif have extended a hand of friendship to each other. This, however, has become a ritual between the two countries whenever there is a change of government in one or the other.

Gowda’s precariously balanced coalition hardly seems able to reopen knotty, age-old issues like Kashmir at this juncture, and it is too early in his own administration for Nawaz Sharif to talk of any repositioning on the nuclear question, for example.

For all intents and purposes, the stalemate between India and Pakistan therefore is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. New Delhi has just announced an increase in its defense spending. Normally this triggers a retaliatory response in Pakistan. Nawaz Sharif’s reaction to this “provocation” by New Delhi, as the Pakistani press termed it, may give the first solid indication of how he plans to deal with the conflicting priorities of Pakistan’s army, its economy, and its long-suffering people.