2008 was an evenly-spread out affair other provinces as important as Punjab. This time it is different: the amphitheatre Punjab, the other provinces sideshows to what is happening here...or what may happen here.
Sindh, Balochistan, KPK, will all add up in the end, but the end is a fortnight, a crucial fortnight, away and whether the old triumphs again or something new emerges from the old will be decided before that, across the immortal land of the five rivers – three of the rivers now dry, reflecting with poetic honesty the dryness of much of the Punjabi soul. (With karahi gosht and the ideology of Pakistan as its symbols, what else is there to expect?)
The standard-bearers of the old are the stuffed tigers of Raiwind, touting experience and achievement as their electoral card. Working the banks and having the courts on their side...this perhaps is the new definition of experience. As for achievement, hmm: sasti roti, subsidised tandoors, laptops, Daanish schools, jangla bus service, etc.
Five years that could have changed the face of Punjab, altered the outlook of the patwari and the thanedar, sacrificed at the altar of gimmickry. But it couldn’t have been otherwise. The Sharifs have been around for 30 years, a lifetime. Their specialty all these years has been the quick-fix gimmick. They can only repeat themselves, not chart anything new. Five more years and we’ll get more of the same. Mix flour and water and atta is what you get. Try this a hundred times and the result will still be the same.
This doesn’t mean the circus lions are easily written off. They have much going for them, principally the expectation, or call it the fear, that the next Punjab government is again theirs. Najam Sethi is the caretaker chief minister. But the bureaucracy and the political class, prospective MNAs and MPAs, are taking it for granted that in less than a month’s time Shahbaz Sharif will be back, with his finger wagging like never before.
It is this expectation, of patwaris and thanedars at their beck and call again, which is keeping the Nawaz League alive, and sustaining its election campaign. Replace this expectation with uncertainty and with the same speed that political hopefuls rushed to the stuffed tigers they will speed away.
Pointers and hounds don’t have as keen a sense of smell as the Punjabi political hopeful, able to sense from afar which way the wind is blowing, and going where his nose directs him. He often gets it wrong, as in 1970, but of what worth his prognosis this time remains to be seen.
True, the Nawaz League thought it had everything sewn up. But in 2008 the Q League thought it had everything sewn up. That was a black-and-white election, Musharraf and stooges on one side, so-called democracy champions on the other. It’s more complicated this time, the PPP down and out and relegated to clear third place in Punjab, the Nawaz League still the party to beat but the lumbering, slow-moving Goliath that it now is, already showing signs of fatigue, up against a far sprightlier foe: Imran Khan. David and Goliath, and Goliath slowly breaking into a sweat.
This is not a clash between left and right. The left is dead in Pakistan, the old ideological wars a thing of the past. This is a clash between the old Ziaist, ISI-mid-wifed right represented by Nawaz Sharif – with godfathers such as my friend, Gen Hamid Gul – and the new ‘corporate’ right, desperate to get out of the straitjacket of the past and try out something new.
Sharif deals in clichés, always has, in such phrases as doodh ka doodh, paani ka paani. This was good enough for Zardari and the PPP’s incompetence. It’s not enough for the challenge posed by Khan and his party.
In his address to Lahore businessmen two days ago Imran spoke of Lee Kuan Yew and Mahathir Mohamad, and professional management. This would be Greek to the normal N politico who is more familiar with a different language, referring in party meetings to Nawaz Sharif as Mohtaram Quaid...Respected Leader...without a hint of embarrassment.
These are different cultures, different world-views. The Sharifs still stand where they always did, in the past. But this is a new Pakistan and they don’t quite seem to understand it. Take, for instance, Hamza Shahbaz, part of the second generation leadership, his face a total giveaway. One look at it and it is hard to think that he would read a single book in his life (which may be an advantage, but that’s another story).
Consider some of the tickets distributed in Lahore: in NA-127 to Waheed Alam, brother to the distinguished judge who gave Ms Ayesha Ahad in police custody on a ten-day remand; and in NA-130 to Sohail Shaukat Butt, son of Peela Butt, who proved helpful in settling matters between the Sharif family and those on their wrong side in the famous Bakery case (in which a bakery employee was given a lesson in manners because he was slow in serving a favoured daughter).
Politics of this kind...not everyone is adept at it. When in distant times the Sharifs served the interests of the army and the ISI no one was more dutiful than them, paying regular court to various generals. When circumstances changed they did not look back.
When they were close to president Ghulam Ishaq Khan they said he was like a father to them. It was not long before Ishaq was given an education in paternal relations he would not have easily forgotten. When Leghari was president they used him against Benazir Bhutto. To get close to Leghari they used Abida Hussain and Shahid Hamid. All three were soon ditched.
This was politics at its best and it worked as long as the old pro-PPP/anti-PPP divide subsisted. But that equation no longer survives, Pakistan having moved on. Once upon a time Punjab was dominated by the PPP. For 30 years it has been a Sharif fiefdom. Now for the first time this fiefdom is under serious threat. What the Musharraf interlude could not do unto the Sharifs is now happening under a different set of circumstances.
Imran is fighting for the same turf as them, only with greater sophistication. And they don’t know what to do about this. And Imran has students and youngsters on his side while the Sharifs are at a loss on how to connect with the young except through a gimmick such as the distribution of laptops. An idea which catches fire, whose time may have come...not all the world’s laptops can stop that from spreading.
But it is not over yet and the Sharifs are no walkover...far from it. So whether Imran can carry all before him remains to be seen. This is what makes this election so interesting. It is still open, nothing settled, no foregone conclusions.
While numbers can be left to astrologers and soothsayers, of one thing reasonable people can be certain: change and flux, rise and fall, the coming into being and the disintegrating, are cardinal principles of life on earth. Things don’t last forever and when an epoch’s time is up nothing can prevent its fall or its merging into something else.
The Sharifs represented another time, a different set of compulsions. The death knell has sounded on that era. Pakistan stands on the threshold of disaster or renewal. That is the choice. A repetition of the old would be disaster compounded. A rejection of that would be a step, a decisive one, towards the new that is struggling to be born.
Email: winlust@yahoo.com

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