- Not Nawaz Sharif’s fault
In his video-link address to the opposition’s APC, Nawaz Sharif has presented his version of what is wrong with Pakistan, which a less charitable observer may be tempted to categorise as selective amnesia. That it was a tour de force in special pleading – presenting just enough information to support one’s case and keeping the rest of it in the background. I would not go as far as that. As far as I am concerned, Sharif was always an exceedingly innocent soul. Recall his statement that he does not remember accepting Mehran-gate money in the IJI days, but he would be happy to pay all of it back with interest, just in case. Memory plays tricks on the best of us. That was ten years ago. Now Sharif is 70 and is hardly getting any younger.
But at the same time, it is important for those of us who are not (yet) senile to set the record straight by providing the minor details Sharif may have forgot to mention here and there, no doubt unwittingly. In what follows I propose to do that in the most indulgent manner at my disposal, for each one of us is bound to become somewhat forgetful provided he lives long enough.
Sharif started by demonstrating his mathematical prowess when he told the participants that military dictators had ruled the country for an average of nine years each whereas the average prime minister had lasted barely two years. He lamented the fact that none of the prime ministers had completed a full term in office. That out of those who were elected by the people, one prime minister was hanged, while others were labelled traitors. He missed the minor fact that the prime minister in question was hanged by Sharif’s own godfather and political mentor (one of the aforementioned dictators), to whom Sharif owes his political birth and rise, and whose mission he kept promising to complete long after he died in that famous plane crash. The fact that Sharif was instrumental in at least four of those prime ministers being dismissed prematurely also seemed to have slipped his mind momentarily. Some say he was also the single major reason behind his own dismissal in each of his three stints. He also failed to touch upon Benazir Bhutto and all that ‘security risk’ business he benefitted from at her cost.
Sharif was visibly perturbed by his conviction that conscientious judges were being pressurized and targeted. That he forgot those notorious phone-calls to Justice Qayyum from Shahbaz Sharif and Saifur Rehman is hardly surprising, since the episode is more than two-decade old. The storming of the Supreme Court by PML-N workers is even older.
Sharif further complained that NAB was a stinking rot that was being used for vindictive activities, where political opponents were being dragged in cases along with their daughters and family members. He forgot to tell his audience who was responsible for the present appointments in NAB. Also, he completely missed recalling the activities of one Saifur Rehman as head of the Ehtesab Bureau – NAB’s predecessor. The concerned paterfamilias also seemed to have forgotten all about those pamphlets with doctored photographs dropped from helicopters, as well as his political opponents made to run from court to court with young kids in tow.
Sharif’s address consisted of more than mere identification of problems. He offered concrete solutions as well. For example, he demanded that the Hamoodur Rehman Commission Report be made public immediately, completely forgetting the fact that he had chosen not to do so despite having plenty of time during three terms as prime minister.
Sharif reminded the nation that Yousaf Raza Gillani had rightly said in the national assembly that there was a state within a state. In what can only be described as another memory lapse, he failed to recall that it was none other than Sharif himself who was instrumental in getting Gillani ousted from the PM office, with help from an over-reaching court whom he now accuses of judicial over-reach but did not then. He added that Gilani and his successor Raja Pervaiz Ashraf would know how hurdles were created around a civilian prime minister and president. Sharif probably banked on the fact that both gentlemen are almost the same age as he is, and therefore chances are that they would have forgotten the identity of the chief architect of those hurdles.
Sharif was visibly perturbed by his conviction that conscientious judges were being pressurized and targeted. That he forgot those notorious phone-calls to Justice Qayyum from Shahbaz Sharif and Saifur Rehman is hardly surprising, since the episode is more than two-decade old. The storming of the Supreme Court by PML-N workers is even older.
Sharif informed his countrymen that elections in the country were managed by invisible non-democratic forces. He forgot to add that he had won more elections than anybody else. In fact, the only documented case of planned rigging in general elections is the IJI episode. For the benefit of millennials, that election saw Sharif come to power. That was the first of the ‘heavy-mandate’ elections – two more would follow. It may just be that Sharif’s definition of rigged elections is elections that he loses. More probably, he does not remember a thing. It was, after all, a long time ago.
