A victim, a saviour: the comeback of Pakistani politician Nawaz Sharif

Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, a politician who has been Pakistan's prime minister three times, has a new mountain to climb. He has been pressed into service to overpower and tame the latest giant in the country’s politics.

By all accounts, Sharif’s rival, Imran Khan, the jailed former prime minister, is at the peak of his popularity, and political powers.

Public opinion surveys place Khan way ahead of the others as the preferred choice of the voters. Seeking to stop him is a challenge few would have accepted. The responsibility has been thrust upon Sharif, who at 75-plus, has a history of health issues.

Sharif is the best choice for the humongous task because he has done exactly that before — applying political maneuvers not dissimilar to the ones being used today to defeat Imran Khan.

Khan has been disqualified from contesting the elections and his political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, is barred from using its election symbol - a cricket bat.

The roots of what’s happening right now go back to the 1970s.

Sharif is scion of an industrialist family that was deeply hurt by late Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s nationalisation in which private firms were taken over by the state. Later Sharif offered to finance candidates of an opposition alliance, which emerged against Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party nominees in the 1977 general election, according to the memoirs of prominent Pakistani politician Chaudhry Shujaat Husain.

The opportunity to make his mark on the political scene came Nawaz Sharif’s way a few years later.

Encouraged by his father and mentor Mian Mihammad Sharif, his first real introduction in politics was as a minister in Punjab, the biggest and the most influential province in Pakistan.

Sharif was handpicked for the role by the then junta leader Gen Ziaul Haq. Within a few years he was commanded into action by military rulers to thwart the advance of Benazir Bhutto, the daughter of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto who was dismissed and hanged by General Zia.

Nawaz Sharif must have built some kind of a reputation to be entrusted with the task of weakening Benazir Bhutto. The truth however is that his own promise and appeal could achieve little without the help of his benefactors.

There is no doubt that all kinds of underhand tactics were applied to put obstacles around Benazir — to the advantage of Sharif who was loudly hailed as a safer, more trustworthy alternative to the PPP leader.

The marriage of convenience continued even after Zia ul Haq was killed in a plane crash in August 1988. Nevertheless, Benazir managed to take the prime minister’s slot as a result of the general election in October 1988.

Benazir was allowed a weak foothold in power only when it got absolutely impossible for the formidable lineup of politicians against her to keep her out.

As part of the same election, Nawaz Sharif and his ill-concealed patrons in the establishment ensured that the government in the all-important Punjab province remained in Sharif’s hands.

The smear campaign against the women from the Bhutto family is a relic from that 1988 vote which is still quoted as an example of how low political ambition can take you.

In the years to follow, the Sharifs were compelled to dissociate themselves from those vicious assaults against their rivals who were, like is the case today, perceived much stronger than their own cult. Something that cannot be dispelled by protestations, however, is the reality of them being nursed and nurtured right up to the top by the establishment.

So what is wrong with being initiated into politics by the establishment? After all, in Pakistan all big politicians from Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to Sharif to Imran Khan have all been guilty of seeking the military generals’ blessings to stay in the power game. It was necessitated by circumstances, the supporters of these leaders say.

The Pakistan Muslim League- Nawaz has returned to this rhetoric as it once again undertakes to neutralise and defeat an opponent who is, according to the bazaar buzz, much more powerful than it.

The establishment could have chosen someone else for this latest assignment against an out of favour Imran Khan. They were forced to go for a remake of the Nawaz Sharif vs Benazir Bhutto epic because of a clear lack of options. Sadly for those hoping for at least a change in cast to offset the oppression unleashed by the sameness of the script, there was no one around who could readily take up the mantle of Khan’s challenger.

The new leaders thrown into the fray have failed to mature into a package worthy of the ‘alternative’ label. Even the names from the Sharif family proved incapable of sustaining visible public support which could have freed Nawaz Sharif from the responsibility he was eventually burdened with.

The party was very much there. Over the years, to Nawaz Sharif’s credit, the PML-N had built itself as a safer bet in power — as compared to the PPP which was the only other contender for many years.

But it was clear that if the establishment wanted the PML- N to go after Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, PML-N had to be led by Nawaz Sharif. The so-called substitutes, Shehbaz Sharif, Maryam Nawaz, et al, could hardly survive early scrutiny by the selectors.

Once it was realised that the PML-N was a dead horse without Nawaz Sharif in saddle, the veteran was purged - in remarkably quick time - of the revolutionary tendencies that he had acquired in recent years after a controversial trial landed him in jail.

Nawaz Sharif was staying in London and it took younger brother only a few quick trips there to convince him that the country direly needed him to sacrifice his new beliefs in unfettered politics and democracy in favour of national stability — which could only be accomplished by eliminating the PTI chief.

The PML-N’s history of having done exceptionally well as a remote-controlled force let loose upon more popular competition was most definitely a big factor here but there was another, organic reason why the PML-N was the kingmakers’ choice to fight the imposing Imran Khan phenomena. Events in Pakistan over the last few years prove that Khan owed his fanciful flight on politics to his opposition to Sharif and his party.

In the Pakistani political equation that had Benazir Bhutto on one side and Nawaz Sharif on the other, the originally reserved and withdrawn Imran Khan seemed to be more comfortable with Sharif rather than his fellow Oxonion, Bhutto. In an old footage, he can be seen reacting with a shy, polite smile to Sharif’s offer to join politics by his side. Also, the Sharifs had helped Khan realise his dream when the government under them gave him the land to build his cancer hospital in Lahore, the capital of Punjab province.

The acrimony between them developed years later.

Even after the cricketer-turned-reformer declared his political ambition by launching PTI in 1996, Khan for a long time did not oppose how the Sharifs were running the government. The aggression against Nawaz Sharif came as if as a second thought, seemingly after years of reluctance.

This was a crucial phased in Khan’s rise to the top. Over time, as the PTI developed into a party with a hatred for the politician per say, its alliance with the most powerful force, which has an old in-built anti-politician bias, was all but natural. In the meanwhile, Nawaz Sharif had a falling out with his benefactors in the establishment.

It were these essentials of power which eventually and on cue brought Imran Khan face to face with the real powers in the country — the military chief and company.

Nawaz Sharif is the favourite again, in defiance of all the surveys that speak of an unprecedented popularity of Imran Khan. Nawaz Sharif is enjoying this vantage point, this impending conqueror's status because of someone else’s dislike for Khan over and above his own disapproval of his rival. He and everyone else would do well to remember that if they are to really understand the cycle that is Pakistani politics.