On Friday, 21 October, Pakistan’s former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, returned to his hometown Lahore to a tumultuous welcome after spending four years in self-exile in the UK. He is not the first Pakistani leader to have spent a long time away from home. His political opponent, Benazir Bhutto, had also spent years abroad before being allowed to return home after an agreement with the former army chief, General Pervez Musharraf.
Sharif’s return brought back memories of Bhutto’s homecoming, an event that felt far more organic and connected with the emotions of the people on the streets than the grand show put on by the Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PMLN) for its leader. Even the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) anthem of 2007 had more zing than the PMLN’s.
The comparatively orchestrated nature of Sharif’s welcome may be a result of the nature of the party, which is tightly controlled by the former prime minister’s family and lacks a cadre but is run through a dedicated patronage structure. However, it’s also a fact that Sharif has returned to a different political landscape. While Bhutto returned to a country governed by a military dictator under pressure from internal dissent to reconcile with the exiled PPP leadership, Sharif faces an army chief in General Asim Munir who has managed to sledgehammer internal opposition, at least for now. This army desires hybrid rule rather than a direct exercise of power. In the Pakistan that Sharif has returned to, Imran Khan remains popular, though unable to organise a mass protest similar to Egypt’s Tahrir Square to force the army to step back.
In fact, the time that Sharif has returned to can be compared more with his first tenure in power in 1990. His return to the country’s politics will be hawkishly watched by an army chief who, like one of the former chiefs, General Waheed Kakar, is in talks with all parties and may retain the option of bringing someone else to power if Sharif doesn’t work out. Even the streets are conscious that Sharif has returned as a result of a deal and will have to make compromises to remain in power. This is the dynamics of what columnist Fasi Zaka describes as ‘Nawaz Sharif version 4.0’, in which the former prime minister will have to abandon thoughts of taking any general to court or challenging the army’s power, which has firmly entrenched itself in most state institutions. From the country’s prime anti-corruption organisation, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), to the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), critical institutions are run by serving or retired military officers.
Sharif has come to power politics where there is limited space for him to play. It’s still not certain who will eventually become the prime minister after elections are held early next year. His main competition will not be with Imran Khan, who is already disqualified and convicted in several court cases, or his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, which is fractured and struggling, or Bilawal Bhutto, who has still not become a favourite choice of the general. The real competition will be internal, with his own brother Shehbaz Sharif, who is believed to be the army’s favourite. According to journalist Nusrat Javeed, people may be seeing Nawaz Sharif’s face, but the crown will be worn by his younger brother.
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Sharif’s biggest challenges
Having returned to Pakistan, Sharif’s biggest challenge now is resetting and re-organising his party, which is beset by internal tensions, especially the divide between his daughter Maryam Nawaz Sharif’s camp and his nephew Hamza Shahbaz, the PM’s son who is also eager for power. The politics of the PMLN revolves around the Sharif family, as evident from the lineup on the stage at the Minar-e-Pakistan rally. There was Maryam Nawaz on one end and Hamza Shahbaz on the other, with senior party leaders from Punjab filling in the space. “It was a GT Road show in which people from Balochistan and Sindh were conspicuously absent,” a political activist told me. This may inadvertently reflect what both the generals and PMLN leaders perceive as the main problem: winning back Punjab from Imran Khan.
However, winning back Punjab won’t be possible without revitalising the economy. The large gathering in Lahore will mean nothing if Nawaz Sharif can’t kickstart the economy. The narrative being built vociferously presents Sharif’s homecoming as the return of a messiah who will bring back the ‘good days’ when Pakistan’s GDP growth was over 6 percent, with better tax collection and other positive indicators. People are made to believe that countries—from China to the UAE and Saudi Arabia—are willing to give money only if Nawaz Sharif is in charge.
Of course, this narrative doesn’t address the huge challenges – not only that Sharif will have to adhere to International Monetary Fund (IMF) guidelines and the fact that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project is not guaranteed to restart the flow of dollars into Pakistan’s economy. One of the reasons for that is Pakistan’s inability to explore its bilateral relationship due to the burden of its existing relations with the West, which won’t give Islamabad any money but wouldn’t want it to get into the other camp either. Even the Middle East money will likely come in the form of investments or state asset purchases. Hence, the PMLN will return to power in an environment where Pakistan faces a push towards privatisation, which also means that the state will have to learn to play a regulatory role, which will naturally have potential inefficiencies. The immediate unhappiness on the streets caused by privatisation, the PMLN’s inability to curtail non-development expenditure, especially non-essential spending, and lack of control of foreign policy makes managing the state a tough task. Clearly, Nawaz Sharif won’t find himself in an easy corner.
But this is also Sharif’s opportunity to convince the army to let go of its bias against India and start trade with the larger neighbour. His remark about having peaceful relations with regional neighbours may not necessarily be a challenge to the generals, as they too believe in the idea, but Sharif will have to be mindful he doesn’t get carried away. He will have to learn to not put himself in the driving seat in taking the relations forward. This is definitely an area where he enjoys ample space because the militancy is not a viable option for the army any more. This means that all outstanding disputes will have to be resolved ‘honourably,’ as Sharif indicated in his speech, which implies peaceful methods such as dialogue. And Nawaz Sharif is certainly the man for the job.
Ayesha Siddiqa is Senior Fellow at the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London. She is the author of Military Inc. She tweets @iamthedrifter. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)