Nawaz should come to the real world
Nawaz Sharif cannot be in a state of semi-retirement from practical politics and yet hope to retain centrality.
Talat Hussain
Maryam Nawaz will make history in Punjab’s politics by becoming its first female chief minister. Shehbaz Sharif will make history by becoming prime minister twice consecutively with a span as short as a year. But this has only become possible by Nawaz Sharif not making history that he wanted to: fourth time prime minister.
If Nawaz were the prime minister at the centre, Shehbaz Sharif would have inevitably gone back to the Punjab killing Mariam’s chance of leading the country’s most populous and politically most important province. So in a way Nawaz’s loss is compensated by his gains elsewhere.
This should please Nawaz Sharif, but apparently, he is still out of sorts because of the election result shock. He has taken his dashed hopes to heart and has dived into a not-so-splendid isolation.
He is inaccessible to his party cadre. He is hands-offish when it comes to the daily grind of party affairs. He is absent from the media, and is surrounded by his courtiers who relentlessly tell him that he has some sort of a halo over his head and as a superlative guru of national politics, he levitates above ordinary mortals.
But reality is cruel. Nawaz Sharif cannot be in a state of semi-retirement from practical politics and yet hope to retain centrality. He is not bigger than the game. No politician is or can afford to be. If you are a player you got to be in the realm. Nawaz for now seems to have left stadium.
This will further reinforce his isolation and reduce his political weight. As it is, his lacklustre return from London, his spiritless speeches and his self-imposed quarantine is frustrating party members who believe their loss is greater than his. Some of them like Rana Sana, Saad Rafique, Khurram Dastagir, Rohail Asghar, Javed Latif, Javed Abbasi, even Rana Mashood, have been struck by a lightening that most of them can’t understand other than the belief that they were Nawaz loyalists and thus paid the price for it.W hile some of them may have sunk under the burden of their laziness and poor preparation.
But even then when you have such a bloodbath of political co-workers who have spent their best years serving the party, you need to give them the healing touch and boost their morale. Going into hibernation and playing the wounded puppy yourself isn’t great leadership. In fact it is no leadership at all.
More to the point, the party’s shaken structures contrast sharply with the Sharifs benefiting from the outcome—PM at the centre and CM in the Punjab, not to mention the omnipresent Ishaq Dar dominating the party floor. The Sharif family’s cases are sorted out and the businesses of Salman Shehbaz and Hamza Shehbaz are hunky dory. The party needs to be told that this arrangement isn’t to the benefit of the family only but for the party as well. Only Nawaz Sharif can do that.
And by not doing that he is opening himself to the charge that this equation has been obtained by sacrificing party’s long-term interests. Leaders should not be seen to be selfish. If they want to command respect, they must reach beyond their coterie and connect with the workers. Nawaz is not a spiritual guide. He is not a Greek god. Voters and workers can only relate to a leader that they feel is in their midst.
Most important, politics is the art of the possible. If Nawaz had a dream and that dream is now broken into a thousand pieces, that’s too bad. It is done. And if it is not dusted in his head then his options are simple: he can come out openly and share his thoughts with his party workers as to what he thinks has actually happened to this plans of becoming the fourth-time prime minister.
If he can’t do that because the political stakes at the centre and Punjab are too high then he needs to make do with whatever is available to him. His party is all he has.
For the longest time a legend held the field that Nawaz makes the party perform its best in electoral contests. This election result doesn’t support the legend. May be the result was designed to break the Nawaz aura. Who knows! (Nawaz knows but he ain’t telling!).
Whatever the case, Nawaz needs the party more than the party needs him. He has to get real about it. He should retire if he wants to. Otherwise he should lead from the front as everyone else is doing it. As it is done all over the world. Just as there is no such thing as half-pregnancy, there is no such thing as half-hearted leadership. You are either in it or out of it. Nawaz has to decide quickly which way it’s going to be for him.