Curtains on Sharif’s political career

RK Kaushik 
Secretary, Government of Punjab

Nawaz Sharif has been sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment along with a fine of £8 million (roughly Pakistani Rs 128 crore 80 lakh) and consfiscation of his Avenfield flats. His daughter Mariam Nawaz has been sentenced to seven years' jail whereas his son-in-law Capt Safdar Awan has been given a one-year jail term by National Accountability Bureau (NAB) court judge Mohammed Bashir in the Avenfield apartments corruption case on July 6, 2018. 

Earlier on July 28, 2017, Sharif was disqualified as a member of the National Assembly by the Supreme Court for non-declaration of his 'receivable' salary from capital FZE in the nomination papers. Consequently, NAB filed four references against the Sharif family about the London properties, the establishment of 16 companies, including Flagship Investment Ltd in the UK and Azizia Steel Mills and Hill Metal Establishment in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. 

He and his sons were named in all three references, while his daughter and son-in-law figured in the Avenfield reference. Another blow to Nawaz was the Supreme Court's ruling on April 13, 2018. It disqualified him from heading the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) (PMLN). 

The Panama case relates to four flats: 16, 16A, 17, 17A at Avenfield House, Park Lane, London. These were purchased in June 1993 and July 1996 by two offshore companies, Nielsen Holdings Limited and Nescoll Limited, which belonged to his children. The family initially showed ignorance but circumstantial proof confuted their claims.

Nawaz was born on December 25, 1949, in the house of his father Mohammad Sharif. They lived in the Akbari Gate area of Lahore. They are Kashmiri Brahmin Muslims and belong to Anantnag. His great grandfather Khuda Baksh migrated to Amritsar in the 1860s. One of his sons, Ramzan Sharif, started living at Jati Umra village in Tarn Taran near Amritsar in the 1880s. Mohammad Sharif was one of the seven sons of Ramzan Sharif. 

Nawaz studied in Saint Anthony's Convent School and Government College in Lahore and did LlB from Punjab University. Initially, he helped his father in Ittefaq Industries and then joined as Sector Commander in the Civil Defence Department of the Punjab Government in 1978. He served there for about three years. The then Governor of Punjab, Lt-Gen Ghulam Jilani Khan, appointed him as Finance Minister of Punjab in May, 1981.  He was made the Chief Minister of Punjab in May, 1985. He became the Prime Minister on November 6, 1990. 

Nawaz's complex personality was perplexing, though initially as a politician he was humble, polite and well-mannered. In 2009, Sartaj Aziz, a Civil Service of Pakistan (CSP)-officer-turned politician, wrote that he was impulsive and, therefore, thrived on dramatic moves rather than well-considered decisions. Sartaz attributed this to Nawaz's belief in the importance of his personal power, a belief based in his public support. Not surprisingly, he adopted "a system of personalised decision-making", without adequate consultations or participation of his cabinet colleagues, parliament or other pertinent bodies. It was this need to consolidate his personal power base rather than institutions for a viable democratic system, which ultimately led to his precipitous downfall. In fact, that became the cause of his three dismissals/removals on July 18, 1993, October 12, 1999 and July 28, 2017.

It is clear that Nawaz earned wealth through wrong means. His 3,200-acre farmhouse called ‘Jati Umra’ in Raiwind near Lahore shows his opulent and flamboyant style of living. 

A conspicuous feature of Nawaz's governance style has been his dictatorial attitude. This was evident in his second tenure when he had a clear majority in the National Assembly. He started off with curtailing the powers of the President to dismiss an elected PM by repealing the obnoxious eighth amendment of the constitution. He then dismissed a navy chief (Admiral Fasih Bukhari) on corruption charges and forced the army chief (Gen Jahangir Karamat) to resign for suggesting a national security council. He removed the Chief Justice (Justice Sajjad Ali Shah) and the President (Farooq Ahmad Leghari). Benazir Bhutto, the then leader of the opposition, was disqualified from holding public office for seven years. All this placed Nawaz in a position that, perhaps, no other Prime Minister had enjoyed in Pakistan. However, instead of using these opportunities to provide good governance, his rule turned authoritarian, which did not accept the rule of law.

Nawaz Sharif appointed five Army chiefs (Gen Abdul Waheed Kakar, Gen. Asif Nawaz, Janjua Gen Parvez Musharraf, Gen Raheel Sharif and Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa) during his three tenures as Prime Minster. The relationship with all five chiefs and thus with the Establishment and its protégé the Pakistan's judiciary turned from bad to worse. 

Nawaz Sharif neither learnt from his blunders nor demonstrated any intellectual capacity to handle the humongous problems facing Pakistan in his over there-and-a-half decades in politics. It is certain that the Establishment would not allow his party to come back to power in the July 25, 2018 elections because it feels that he has a penchant to use a favourable electoral verdict as an excuse to indulge in corruption on a massive scale and also imperiousness and arrogance of power to venture in no-go areas (defence policy, nuclear policy, India, China, Afghanistan, Iran, Middle East and US policies of Pakistan) for civilian politicians.

The Panama papers show the despondency that is tormenting Pakistan: the political system has evolved in a manner that allows the powerful to plunder the country with impunity. Nawaz represented a new breed of businessmen-cum-politicians. Such a class of politicians no doubt dilutes the influence of both the left and the Islamic parties to some extent.

The options for him have withered away — he has either to live in England or stay in jail in Pakistan. Only time will tell which option he goes for.