View from Pakistan: Need for new survival kit

Karachi: What is the best-case scenario for Nawaz Sharif’s government? That it might just survive Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s onslaught? Sums up the dilemma of those who believe that nothing except continuity of the political process will instil change in Pakistan. Many of those opposed to mid-term polls and extra-constitutional regime changes are wondering if the Sharif government will be left with any room for governance even if it manages to limp along.

The best time to initiate policy reform is during the post-election honeymoon period they say. With a freshly harvested mandate, with needs of political expediency still at bay and with no urgent need to rally core constituency, this period affords the required political space to take unpopular decisions. Can a crisis cultivate the urge within a status quo Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) to experiment with new ideas? Will survival instinct heighten the PM’s focus on conservation or change?

The personal challenge for Sharif is two-fold. One, the policy space left with him as a civilian PM has shrunk drastically (he’s already pulled all favours with the khakis as well as his competitors in Parliament). And two, faced with PTI animus and public angst, he would be tempted to recede to the comfort of being surrounded with sycophants as opposed to critics. The first threatens to reduce him to a lame duck, the second to isolate him further and accelerate his downward spiral.

What compounds this conundrum is that Sharif comes across as a distant potentate who can’t be bothered to fight for anything, including his own position. We’ve heard all kinds of accusations hurled at him during the last couple of months and he won’t respond. We’ve heard his acts and omissions as PM being censured, from atop containers and from within Parliament that stood behind him, and he won’t respond. Sharif exhibits an inexplicable lack of urgency to revise the direction in which his government is headed.

Does he feel no need to reassure people that he is all there and alive to the war-like situation in which his government continues to exist without functioning? Does he feel no need to buoy up his supporters and convince fence-sitters that he has the wherewithal to pull his government out of the mess it has landed itself in as well as a thought-out plan to do so? Does he not realise that the sentiment unleashed by PTI is now fixated on the abusive relationship between our political class and our society and not just rigging?

To break free of this Sharif will need to respond with a plan that is substantive. On the symbolic front, Nawaz Sharif needs to let his family disappear into the shadows away from public eye. Had Shahbaz Sharif not been the brother (and only a party loyalist like Rana Sanaullah), wouldn’t he have been asked to quit after Model Town? Is Ishaq Dar just another minister who can be sacked if he messes up the country’s finances?  Shahbaz, Dar, Mariam and Hamza must be great people. But family and politics don’t mix well. If there is little distinction between the PM’s family and PML(N)’s core team, are we a democracy or a hereditary plutocracy?

Pakistan is a country with no dearth of bright people. The Cabinet must reflect diversity instead of the fears of the PM. Can one think of another democracy without full-time defence, law and foreign ministers?

Sharif often comes across as someone deliberately dragging his feet just to get fired. If the impression is false, he should tell people that. And what he will do to improve the lives of Pakistanis, in what time frame and how. Political rhetoric and regime change are no solution to Pakistan’s ills. But neither is a dysfunctional regime relying on miracles. Pakistan is changing. And if Nawaz Sharif refuses to reinvent himself, it won’t be Imran Khan but he himself responsible for his undoing.

By arrangement with Dawn