Missed Opportunities
It is May 26, 1993. The Supreme Court has just restored Mian Nawaz Sharif as PM of Pakistan. On the hill a lonely (and suddenly beleaguered) President waits with apprehension about his former protege’s next move. Ms. Benazir Bhutto similarly waits anxiously with her worry beads. If Mian Nawaz Sharif should choose to go to the President and make up as any politician in his place would have done in similar circumstances, showing magnanimity in victory, the game is over for her for some time. On the outside chance that the PM expands on his confrontation, there is hope yet. Riding the crest of success, Mian Sahib chooses the path of confrontation and thus takes the “laurels from his (own) brow and casts them into the dust”, to quote Churchill about Wavell after his defeat at the hands of Rommel in the desert. Next, having formed the Government after the 1993 elections and thus displaying its coalition majority, the PPP shows signs of political accommodation over the election of a compromise President, maybe even someone like Senator Sartaj Aziz from the PML(N). Again Mian Sahib’s hawks prevail, the PML(N) stands firm about a PML(N) President of their choice, seesawing between Gohar Ayub and Wasim Sajjad. Net result, PPP goes for its own candidate and we see the non-controversial and generally liked PPP stalwart Farooq Khan Leghari elected as President. Third flashback, President Leghari immediately resigns from the PPP in an effort to display genuine neutrality in his new role as President and journeys to Lahore, inviting Mian Sahib to tea in the Punjab Governor’s House and if not, requests to go over himself to Mian Sahib’s house in Model Town to call on the Leader of the Opposition, in fact leaning over backwards beyond the limits of protocol. Peevishness persists and discourtesy aside, the meeting has not yet materialised, two years later. In Mian Sahib’s political history, the field is strewn with missed opportunities, so many and so crucial that it would require much more than one single article to recount them. Teflon-like hide aside, one cannot keep on passing the buck to his Advisors.
Given the present Karachi situation and the grave danger that it poses to the existence of the country, the Leader of the Opposition has taken the initiative and called a Conference of all parties on Karachi. Given the foot-dragging of the PPP regime as far as negotiations with MQM are concerned, this is indeed a most welcome proposal to draw the MQM(A) back into the national mainstream. One should take the analogy of the ultimate symbol of terrorism, the air hijacker. Does one stop talking to the hijacker or does one immediately start talking to him in order to gain time and wear down his demands? While labelling MQM as terrorists may be a moot point in a city full of terrorist groups of various ilk and creed, the PPP should certainly not stop talking with the majority party in Sindh’s urban areas. To circumvent PPP’s obduracy on this issue, Mian Sahib took a political lead of great significance by calling this Conference and then proceeded to shoot himself in the foot by refusing to invite PPP.
Divided, We Shall Fall
The germs of the whole range of present day crisis were really laid about 500 days ago with the failure of Ms Benazir’s first Long March in November 1992, the facts thereafter being so well-known that it serves useful purpose in referring to the salient features only. That was the symbolic high watermark from where we have been reduced to the dire straits that we find ourselves today. It would be macabre humour to put it down to poetic justice that Ms Benazir’s government has to face the present travails affecting the country in the sense that “those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind”. However, Nawaz Sharif’s government must also take its share of blame, having dispersed the Long Marchers Mian Nawaz Sharif did not take heed of the warning signals and made only half-hearted moves for rapprochement with the then Opposition. As this scribe wrote in THE NATION in November 1992, he chose to become like “the wind which cannot read”. While it is true that one must negotiate from a position of strength, once our leaders feel omnipotent their penchant is to shun negotiations. Ms Benazir does not seem to have learnt this lesson. How wise were Rome’s leaders who would place a man at Caesar’s shoulders even while he was triumphantly basking in the accolades of a hero-worshipping crowd, to repeatedly intone, “Remember, thou art mortal”!
On the eve of our 38th Republic Day, most of the wide range of problems we are facing have come to a head in reaching crisis proportions. The foundations of our economic woes were laid by the artificial limbo created by GIK to perpetuate his own rule, he held the nation hostage to his own ambitions. Till November 1992, Pakistan was moving pell mell towards economic emancipation, the flood devastation of Sept-Oct 92 and certain enthusiastic but questionable schemes of the Mian Nawaz Sharif Regime notwithstanding. The death of then COAS, Gen Asif Nawaz, was the first precursor of things to come. In short, by April 1993, the economic gains of the past two years had been brought to a jarring halt. The worsening political climate dampened, the boom climate necessary to attract the continued inflow of the massive input of foreign investment that would keep the economic locomotive humming. There was a virtual hiatus till the Moeen Qureshi Caretaker Administration took over but the Caretaker Government was hamstrung by the limited period of their reign and their non-elected status. The seeds of their non-success, if not failure lay in the public perception that their rule was temporary. Even then, one must commend Moeen Qureshi for a number of initiatives, marred only by his Administration’s studied tilt for the PPP in an election which was to have been played on neutral ground. In an holier-than-thou stance, then acting President Wasim Sajjad did nothing to ensure that the playing field remained even for his party. However, this underdog status suited Mian Nawaz Sharif politically, who by the end of the election campaign had become the first political person in more than two decades to not only stem the PPP floodwaters but give the populace of Pakistan the first genuine political alternative to the Bhuttos, late father, daughter and (now) Prodigal Son.