Exile or shahadat for Nawaz? : The Tribune India

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Exile or shahadat for Nawaz?

Last week in New York City, a Pakistani cab driver from Gujranwala told me that many of his countrymen were upset with former PM Nawaz Sharif because he wanted good relations with India.

Exile or shahadat for Nawaz?

Thorny side: Nawaz riled the army for his insistence on exercising full authority as PM.



Vivek Katju

Last week in New York City, a Pakistani cab driver from Gujranwala told me that many of his countrymen were upset with former PM Nawaz Sharif because he wanted good relations with India. As I was about to endorse his shrewd and accurate observation, his next comment drove me to silence. He said the illness of Nawaz’s wife Kulsoom, who is on ventilator support in a London hospital, is a sham and that she will be out of the ICU on July 25, the day Pakistan goes to the polls. For good measure he added, “You will see.”

The cabbie’s comments captured the state of Pakistan’s public life today in its contradictions, viciousness and assessments, sometimes correct. The criminal conviction and harsh sentencing of Nawaz and his daughter and political heir Maryam Nawaz by the National Accountability Court cannot be construed as calm and independent judicial decisions but as part of Pakistan’s political condition profiled by the cabbie’s observations. The timing of the decision cannot but be deliberate. The election campaign will now enter its final stage and the clear intention is to show that Nawaz Sharif and his daughter have no future in the country’s political life. 

Will this be so for Nawaz? But first a brief background.

Ironically, Nawaz Sharif, initially a protégé of the army, has been at odds with it for over two decades. Consequently, his first term was cut short in 1993 when the then army chief, Gen Waheed Kakar, asked the then President Ishaq Khan and Nawaz to resign. His second term ended with the Musharraf coup in October 1999. His third term came to an end when the army and the Supreme Court caught him in a pincer following the revelation in the Panama Papers in mid-2016 that his family owned property in London as well as companies abroad. The court upheld in July last year, in a dubious judgment, the plea that his conduct did not meet the constitutional requirement that Members of Parliament should be sadiq and ameen. He was permanently disqualified from holding any political office as well as leading his political party, the PML (N). The court also ordered that Nawaz be prosecuted in a time-bound manner for corruption and supervised the case. The present judgment has been delivered in that corruption case.

The real reason for the army’s unhappiness with Nawaz since 1997 lay in his insistence that he would exercise full authority as PM in accordance with the constitution. This connoted that he would be in effective control of the country’s security and foreign policies, including its India policy. The army considers such a desire in a PM as impertinence and Nawaz had to be put in his place. He had also deviated from the army’s script in taking part in PM Modi’s inaugural ceremony in 2014, and later at Ufa in 2015, when he approved an India-Pakistan joint statement which focussed on terrorism and did not mention the J&K issue. Worse still, on Christmas that year, he welcomed Modi at his home in Raiwind for a drop-in visit. The army not only sabotaged Nawaz-Modi initiatives through the Pathankot and Uri attacks of 2016, but also used the opportunity provided by the Panama Papers to stage his political strangulation through the court process. These criminal convictions are part of that continuum.

Unlike Nawaz, his younger brother, Shahbaz Sharif — who now heads the PML(N) and was the powerful chief minister of the Punjab — the family’s power base, has always been wary of the army. He has tried to coexist with it even in subservient status and this time, too, he has not been critical of it while publicly remaining loyal to his brother. On the other hand, Nawaz blamed the army in an interview carried in the Dawn, Pakistan’s most respected daily, some weeks ago, for the country’s diplomatic isolation on account of its linkages with foreign-oriented terrorist groups. When the PML (N) sought to blame the newspaper for inaccurate reporting, Nawaz reiterated the charges. This was a cornered Nawaz showing fighting spirit and taking his cause to the people. 

The Pakistan army is a professional and a political force. It may now maintain a veneer of political neutrality but in reality, it makes its choices known. In the run-up to the election it has never masked its desire to finish off Nawaz politically. If four decades ago it deposed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and sent him to his death, it now wants to consign Nawaz to his political death. Will Nawaz wear the robes of a political shaheed and return to Pakistan and go to prison or follow the time-honoured way of Pakistani public persons who are in trouble and go into foreign exile? Indeed, he himself followed that path after he was deposed by Musharraf. In a deal brokered by the Saudis he went into exile. 

After the verdict, he said he would return to Pakistan and was willing to go to prison. Earlier, he had said unlike dictators he would be among the people and face the consequences of court decisions. If he musters the courage and persuades his daughter too to go to prison he may gain public sympathy, for his conduct would be directly in contrast to that of former President and army chief, Gen Pervez Musharraf, who is living abroad and is not willing to face Pakistani courts on several charges, including treason.

Musharraf’s fate was a constant point of friction between Nawaz and the army. The army did not want him to return and after the 2013 elections desired that he be allowed to leave Pakistan. It had unhappily watched Musharraf being dragged through in several cases. Nawaz had resisted the army but ultimately allowed to leave Pakistan. In these elections Musharraf had wanted to return to contest but wanted virtual immunity from arrest that the courts did not provide. There is little doubt that Nawaz can severely embarrass the army by returning and going to prison when Musharraf is abroad.

Such a move may energise PML (N) cadres and change public perceptions about Nawaz. Even in the cynical cesspool of Pakistani politics siasi shahadat will eventually yield results. As the road will be tough the question essentially is if Nawaz truly shows the courage and conviction to walk the road to prison or takes the soft option of exile?

A former Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs

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