Daily Times Editorial Feb 27, 2013

Nawaz Sharif’s political moves PML-N chief Mian Nawaz Sharif has embarked on a very different journey from the one he set out on many moons ago when he first entered politics. With the elections looming, he has made some intelligent moves to overcome his party’s gaps and weaknesses, and position his party to mount a serious challenge to the rival PPP. While President Asif Ali Zardari and Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari have relocated themselves to Lahore in an attempt to revive the long time flagging fortunes of the party in Punjab, Nawaz has been meeting all possible parties that could potentially become his allies in the upcoming electoral contest. On Monday in Lahore, Mian sahib hosted JUI-F’s Maulana Fazlur Rehman, and if the ensuing statements by both worthies are perused, it becomes clear that although concrete details are yet to be settled through a committee set up by both parties for the purpose, the decision has been taken in principle to cooperate with each other in the polls. On Tuesday, Mian Nawaz visited Sindh, en route to Karachi. He has managed to bring Pir Pagara’s PML-F, alienated from the PPP, and the National People’s Party on board. He also has goodwill amongst the Sindhi nationalists. Looking at these steps, it may be instructive to retrace Mian Nawaz Sharif’s trajectory through his political career. Accused initially of being a creature of the establishment when he was first picked up and mentored by General Jillani in the early 1980s, Nawaz Sharif incrementally evolved into a political leader in the 1990s who had outgrown his erstwhile mentors in the establishment. This brought him into conflict with powerful institutions, including the judiciary and the military. The latter conflict in fact finally ended in the military coup of 1999 and a decade of forced exile. It was towards the end of that barren period out in the cold that Mian sahib finally was engaged by Benazir Bhutto and convinced of the truth that the politicians had been played off against each other during the decade of the 1990s, to the detriment of democracy and the political process. Hence the Charter of Democracy enshrined the principle that ‘toppling’ the rival’s governments with the help of the establishment must cease. Though Ms Bhutto is tragically no longer amongst us, the spirit (unfortunately not always the letter) of the Charter of Democracy still influences our polity. That is the best explanation to date of Mian sahib’s restraint in the face of what he perceived as betrayal and provocation from his erstwhile coalition partner the PPP not to rock the boat of the democratic system, despite strident calls for more extreme positions and actions by the hawks within his party. Recalling this posture over the last five years on the part of one of our major political leaders heartens one and raises the very real possibility that our democratic culture is maturing before our very eyes, imperceptibly perhaps, but definitely. There is of course an impatience at the heart of the polity, informed in large measure by the travails of the people. Voices that seek ‘easy’ solutions through authoritarian or even military dispensations are harking back to a past we hope the country has left behind. Democracy is neither easy to establish, nor to consolidate. The process is messy, loud and discordant. Nevertheless, our and the world’s history indicates that societies that have struggled and muddled through the initial, contradictory phases of democracy, eventually discovered the blessings of a system with established rules of the political game, leading to stability and continuity. It would do all our doubting Thomases as well as the people at large a great deal of good in the long run if they were able to distinguish between democracy as a system per se, and the government of the day. The principle to be established is that governments come and go, the system must go on if Pakistan is to overcome its grievous problems and emerge into the light of a new and brighter day.