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The Godfather

Long Island and New York are a long way from Raiwind and Lahore but a recent interview with Mian Mohammad Sharif, the father of former PM Mian Nawaz Sharif, “Abbaji” as he is widely known, shows that Godfathers are alive and well, in any country and in any age they remain the same. Mario Puzo’s fictionalized saga of a prominent mafia family had “olive oil” as the core family business, for the Sharifs it is “steel”. The script of “The Godfather” is eerily familiar, the similarities are uncanny. Vito Corleone and the eldest Sharif, both dominant personalities displaced from their roots, rise from humble origins in the new country to control large, powerful “families” comprising blood relations and close associates. One does not see “Abbaji” going around brandishing a pistol knocking off people in his young age as did the elder Corleone but a notorious faction of Kashmiri origin of Lahore, generally believed to be the muscle of the Sharif family, specialized in physically taking over property, helpless widows being a special target of the “Qabza” group. It may be no mean coincidence that their “Capo” is presently residing in New York, what better safe distance from where to fulminate and conspire than the home of the original Godfather?

Vito Corleone had a dream, to make his business “legitimate” and his sons in the mainstream of national politics. His peasant cunning orchestrated lives and careers with focused aim. With judges, chiefs of police, mayors, etc in his pocket virtually controlling the civil administration, elder son Sonny was to be his heir, the younger Michael was destined for politics. Despite military rule Abbaji continues to wield commensurate influence in the police and bureaucracy, such is the potent power of money and patronage in strengthening (and sustaining) their power-base. Corleone’s plans ran into trouble because of the cross-purposes ambitions of other gangsters but Abbaji is far luckier, one of his sons became Prime Minister of Pakistan twice and another the Chief Minister of Punjab. Abbaji names a long list of luminaries in politics, uniform, bureaucracy, business, etc visiting, first Model Town and then later Raiwind (on his shifting residence), to do him homage and pledge their loyalties in person. In Godfather’s world respect and influence are bought with money, slights are never forgotten, or forgiven. People are classified as “good” or “bad” according to the measure of their “loyalty” to the family. In an article in THE NATION on Oct 10, 1998 entitled ‘RAIWIND, WE HAVE PROBLEM!”, I had commented, quote, “Since everyone knows that all decision-making emanates from the patriarch of the Sharif family, it is only right that all Pakistanis collectively turn to the Sharif homebase, “Raiwind, we have a problem!” in the same manner “that the spaceship commander in the real-life movie “Apollo-13” very laconically informs his base in Texas, “Houston, we have a problem!” The decision-making process is hardly institutionalised or for that matter democratic. While it speaks very well of the Sharif brethren to give devoted respect to their father and to seek his advice about all the important issues, they hardly have the right to surrender the democratic mandate given to them by the people to the veto of one man. The Sharif patriarch and his geriatric inner circle are arch-conservatives, the person really calling the shots (instead of the PM) is too far right of the vast middle ground that is really Pakistan. The first symbolic public exposure of this farce was when, instead of consulting the cabinet or even his senior party colleagues, or for that matter taking into account the feelings of the smaller Provinces, President Tarar was presented as a fait accompli, shoved down their democratic throats to be more precise.” Unquote

Abbaji’s recollections are a sorry indictment of what politics in Pakistan has become, mostly the privilege of a few elite families, the manipulations of the landed gentry giving some way grudgingly to the nouveau urban rich. For those who believed in Mian Nawaz Sharif, and I am one of them, eroding of the delusion we had been living in for years was very upsetting, adding to the disappointment of our very own Princess failing in the acid test of governance. Ms Benazir was intellectually capable of governing with competence but as a woman in Pakistan she could not separate the straitjacket of eastern culture from the requirements of good governance, this culture held her captive and destroyed her great potential of becoming a really superb national leader.

There is no crime in dreaming that your sons may become the leaders of the country, that is a dream one hopes many fathers in Pakistan will continue to have. The problem lies in the modus operandi in accomplishing that dream and once the objective is reached, the means used to perpetrate that power in pursuing one’s own selfish interests in supercession of the vital interests of the country one is privileged to serve as leader. In an article in THE NATION on Dec 19, 1997 entitled THE CITY-STATE OF LAHORE, I wrote “The choice of nominee of the city-state of Lahore for President symbolizes the importance (or more correctly the lack of it) given to the Presidency, the national interest being subservient to the sequence of personal parameters. Making Parliament into a virtual cipher with the 14th Amendment, tarnishing the image of and polarizing the supreme judiciary as well as emasculation of the Presidency after the 13th Amendment, the Presidency is now about to be further down-sized” unquote. A time comes when every father must let go, they cannot manipulate by remote control as Abbaji continues to do even today. John Kennedy’s father was also self-made and meticulously planned and manoeuvred his (and brother Robert’s) rise up the political ladder. However, once in power, were their own masters, never a hint that the Kennedy patriarch or any member of the family ever got involved in influencing decisions of State or for that matter acquire any financial benefits in their years of public service. In his inaugural address as US President in 1961 John F Kennedy said, “my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” unquote.  And he meant what he said. In the case of the Sharif family there seems to be very little doubt that the family prospered because of the use political power to further their own commercial interests. SROs were issued by CBR to suit Sharif family business interests and loans advanced for huge projects without adequate collateral from government controlled financial institutions. Misusing government machinery for personal gain is not only unacceptable, it is also accountable. Clever, highly-paid lawyers may get them off on technical grounds but in the moral sense the Sharif family cannot escape retribution. Leadership of a poor country inculcates a moral responsibility in the leaders towards the impoverished (and God knows we have a great many) of that State, what is the quantum of personal greed that seduces a person to compromise his (and her) conscience and line his own pockets at the expense of the poor of that State?

In the same aforementioned article of Dec 19, 1997 I wrote “Those of us in the media who have been rooting for Mian Nawaz Sharif since his first dismissal as PM in 1993 (including myself) are guilty of helping the PML talk their way out of self-created controversies” and further, “we have been propagating from various media pulpits that the PM holds the national interest supreme, even at his personal cost, whereas the bitter truth may well be that he stays well within the parameters of a rather myopic annunciation of democracy of the Lahoris, by the Lahoris and for the Lahoris”, unquote.

Democracy has no place for one-man rule. In the circumstances leading upto Oct 12 military rule was inevitable, indeed if there had to be a one-man rule why not that of an organized entity like the Army rather than the elder Sharif running the affairs of country through his proxies without having to face the democratic process himself and without the necessary qualifications to do so? With all the powers of the State resting in the hands of a Godfather who was way past his prime even before the end of the 20st Century (and whose mindset is more akin to the 15th), the country was rapidly descending to the dark ages even as the new millennium approached. If the Godfather’s rule would have been in the country’s vital interests one could have condoned it but it was compromised by the narrow, selfish interests of a one-track agenda, Sharif-isation of everything. That is not an acceptable proposition. Given the commitment to democracy in the 21st century, Godfathers and Pakistan cannot co-exist. The Army would be well advised to make the Godfather an offer he cannot refuse.

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