Pakistan: A Hard Country (43 page)
unless it is to move into outright rebel ion against Pakistan – which most Sindhi politicians do not wish to contemplate, for reasons that wil be brought out in the chapter on Sindh. As the Sindhi PPP politician quoted above told me after reciting a litany of complaints about Zardari:
But even with al the mistakes and even crimes of Zardari, in the interior of Sindh people love the Bhuttos. And anyway, we have no options. Who else can we Sindhis vote for? ... It is also unfair to compare Zardari to Bibi [Benazir Bhutto]. Nobody can compare to her. Al the other leaders are pygmies by comparison.
It remains to be seen if anger in Sindh at the PPP government’s failure during the floods of 2010 has been enough to shatter this dynastic loyalty.
Final y, the PPP can appeal to members of religious traditions that have reason to fear Sunni Islamist ascendancy, and which see the Muslim League as increasingly associated with Deobandi and Ahl-e-Hadith culture: fol owers of the Barelvi tradition, devotees of the shrines and of course the Shia. The Bhuttos and Zardaris are both Shia, and many of the leading figures of the party come from pir families with strong Shia leanings.
In the past, this has not marked a clear Sunni – Shia split between the main parties. Kinship, personal and factional rivalries divide al Pakistan’s religious traditions. The PML(N) contains many Shia and Barelvis, and the Sharifs have been careful to show great respect and support to the leading shrines. However, the savage attacks by the Pakistani Taleban and their Punjabi sectarian al ies on shrines in 2010, and the apparent closeness to the sectarians of some of the Sharifs’ leading al ies, mean that Shia and Barelvis may begin to desert the PML(N), possibly dealing it a heavy blow in certain areas.
The PPP leadership for its part knows very wel that it would be crazy to make an openly Shia appeal in an overwhelmingly Sunni country, in which outright, declared Shia (as opposed to devotees of shrines which bridge the Shia – Sunni gap) may be as few as 10 per cent. The Bhuttos, Zardaris and other families therefore fol ow Sunni rituals in public – in accordance with the old Shia tradition of taqiyya, which permits Shia to disguise their real beliefs if threatened with persecution. Nonetheless, the PPP does seem to have a degree of permanent residual support in some minority religious groups – a point to which I wil return in the next chapter, on Punjab.
THE PAKISTAN MUSLIM LEAGUE (NAWAZ) (PML(N))
On the whole, however, and for many years now, Pakistani vote swings have been powered less by enthusiasm for the party in opposition than exasperation with the party in power. In other words, the future of the PPP wil depend heavily on how its main rivals, the Muslim League of the Sharifs, perform when they are next in government. If the PML(N)’s past record is anything to go by, the PPP wil have plenty of opportunities to exploit public discontent. Indeed, anger at the PPP-led national government in Punjab over failures of the flood relief effort in 2010 was to some extent balanced by anger at the PML(N)’s provincial government for the same reason.
When trying to define the identity of the Muslim League, I quoted Benazir Bhutto on the slogan Jeeay Bhutto to a Pakistani friend, and asked him what the PML(N)’s equivalent would be. ‘Parathas,’ he replied like a shot, referring to the fried flat-bread much loved in Punjab. ‘Just listen and you’l hear how right it sounds for them: “Long live parathas.” It’s a lovely word. They’re warm and wonderful. They lift the heart ...’
This is of course a shockingly frivolous comment, and I sincerely hope that no Pakistani reader is so utterly lost to political seriousness as to laugh at it. This joke was, however, also intended to make a serious point concerning one of the greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses of the PML(N), namely their strongly Punjabi character.
It is the party’s base in Punjab and in Punjabi sentiment that al owed it to liberate itself from its original military masters and to survive eight years in the political wilderness after Musharraf’s coup in 1999. On the other hand, this means that its vote in other provinces has been very limited, and it has never been able to rule in Sindh except through local al iances of opportunist ‘feudals’. In the NWFP, however, Sharif’s criticism of the US and distancing from the struggle with the Taleban may pay permanent electoral dividends.
Punjabi culture largely explains the particular charismatic appeal of Nawaz
Sharif
to
many
ordinary
Punjabis,
so
absolutely
incomprehensible to most Western observers and indeed to Pakistani liberal intel ectuals. His rough but jovial personal style goes with this, as does the fact that, while frequently wooden and tongue-tied in English, he apparently speaks very effectively in Punjabi.
Leaders of the party like to stress that it had its beginnings in the mass opposition movement to Z. A. Bhutto in 1976, and especial y in the outrage of the conservative Punjabi middle classes at Bhutto’s socialism, Westernization and autocracy. The self-image of the core PML(N) is therefore of a ‘moderate conservative and Muslim, but also modern middle-class party’, as the PML(N) Information Secretary, Ehsan Iqbal, put it to me.28 The key role in putting the Muslim League together in the mid-1980s, and in choosing Nawaz Sharif to run it, was however played by the military administration of Zia-ul-Haq, and the ISI.
Nawaz Sharif (born 1949) and his younger brother Shahbaz are the sons of an industrialist of Kashmiri-Punjabi origin who moved to Pakistan in 1947 (there wil be more on the family in the next chapter), and who moved to Saudi Arabia when his industries were nationalized under Z. A. Bhutto. The family’s Punjabi middle-class origins, Pakistani nationalism, hatred of the Bhuttos, links to Saudi Arabia and (in the father’s case) personal piety al endeared them to Zia. In 1985 Nawaz Sharif was made Chief Minister of Punjab (a position held as of 2010
by Shahbaz), and in 1991 became Prime Minister of Pakistan for the first time.
The Sharifs’ business origins and pro-business policies mean that businessmen favour their party. Indeed, every single one I have met has done so, irrespective of whether they have been secular or conservative in their personal culture. This link to business has given the PML(N) a clear edge over the PPP when it comes to economic policy and efficient government in general. As a leading industrialist in Lahore (one of the most cultivated and cosmopolitan figures I have met in Pakistan) told me:
The PPP have repeatedly chosen very weak economic teams, because they are feudals and populists, while the Sharifs are businessmen by upbringing and have careful y cultivated the business elites. The PPP have not had one good period in government as far as economic policy is concerned; whereas Nawaz Sharif’s team has always been good – it was crafted by that old sage Sartaj Aziz. So businessmen certainly trust the Muslim League more. The genesis of this difference is [Zulfikar Ali] Bhutto’s brutal nationalization, which left a legacy of distrust for the PPP among businessmen that has never gone away ...
But we certainly don’t have ful confidence in the Muslim League.
Unfortunately, Nawaz is not the most stable of characters, as his past record in government shows, and his brother is a good number two, a good administrator, but not a leader or visionary. Shahbaz is wil ing to stay on his feet for sixteen hours straight kicking ass and giving orders, but ask him about an export-led growth strategy and he won’t have a clue. Whereas Nawaz does have a kind of vision for Pakistan, but he is impetuous, careless and can be cruel ...
On the other hand, another reason why businessmen trust Nawaz is that if you cross him as a businessman, he gets annoyed but he does not retaliate against you or your business – against journalists who criticize him on the other hand he can be very harsh. When I publicly criticized his budget in ’99 he was very angry but did not loose the police or the income tax authorities on me – there was no case of an out of order tax inspection or the police flagging down my car and so on; the typical pressure tactics here. And I have never heard that he has done this to any other businessmen.
I asked a former minister in Nawaz Sharif’s governments of the 1990s to sum up his character. ‘Not at al educated but very shrewd, intel igent, determined and courageous. But unfortunately also autocratic, impulsive, reckless and hot-tempered, which has often been his downfal ’, was the response.
Shahbaz Sharif for his part has had a good personal reputation for efficiency, hard work and personal honesty as Chief Minister of Punjab (while of course employing just the same patronage incentives as everyone else in his political strategy). He also seems to be good at picking and listening to good advisers. He exemplifies something that I have often heard said about the PML(N), in different forms, that ‘their real ideology is managerialism’. As with his brother, this goes with a considerable reputation for autocracy and ruthlessness.
The number of ‘encounter kil ings’ of criminals by police in Punjab soared after Shahbaz Sharif became Chief Minister in 2008, though I was told that he also gave strict orders that care be taken that only genuinely violent criminals were to be kil ed. When I interviewed him in Lahore in January 2009, he was impressively briefed on a great many policy issues compared with the PPP ministers I met, some of whom seemed to be wandering through government in a kind of dream, interspersed with purely ritualistic statements about their policies and ideals.
Party representatives like to stress the middle-class nature of the PML(N) as against the ‘feudal’ Bhuttos. ‘Mian Sharif [Nawaz’s father]
was often cal ed Mistri [blacksmith] either as a term of affection or an insult,’ I was told. ‘But he didn’t mind. He used to say, “I am a smal man, but God gave me these big hands so that I can work iron.”’
Dr Saeed Elahi, a PML(N) member of the Punjab assembly, told me, echoing the Sindhi PPP leader quoted above: The middle classes in Punjab see us as their party cultural y and in every way; and the poor, wel , they think that we have at least brought about some good development for them, more than anything the PPP have ever done. But while the cities have solid PML(N) support and we can choose good middle-class candidates, the countryside is stil dominated by biradiris , and by feudals, tribal chieftains and pirs, so we have no choice but to choose feudals with their own fol owings.29
In most of rural Punjab the party’s leaders are therefore close to those of the PPP in terms of social origin, and the PML(N)’s strategy for gaining and keeping support through patronage does not differ significantly from that of the PPP.
The Muslim League, however, have stressed both their moderate Islamist and their nationalist credentials, seeking thereby to contrast themselves with the ‘Westernized’ Bhuttos. In 2007 – 10, the Sharifs also distanced themselves from the al iance with the US and the campaign against the Pakistani Taleban, without categorical y opposing them. Thus in July 2010, fol owing a Pakistani Taleban attack on the great shrine of Data Ganj Baksh in Lahore which kil ed forty-five worshippers, Nawaz Sharif echoed Imran Khan in cal ing for peace talks between the government and the Pakistani Taleban: If Washington says it is prepared to talk to the Taliban who are wil ing to listen, then a similar initiative should also come from Islamabad. We should not only see what decision they [the Western countries] wil make about our fate. We should decide our own fate ... Peace is the priority and for that, ways can be found.30
In March 2010 his brother Shahbaz stated publicly: General Musharraf planned a bloodbath of innocent Muslims at the behest of others only to prolong his rule, but we in the PMLN opposed his policies and rejected dictation from abroad and if the Taliban are also fighting for the same cause then they should not carry out acts of terror in Punjab [where the PML-N is ruling].31
These statements are an obvious attempt to get the Pakistani Taleban and their al ies to stop attacking Punjab and concentrate on other provinces instead. This may not do much for the Sharifs’ standing in those provinces, and as of 2010 also does not seem to be working.
The PML(N) government’s failure to prevent massive terrorist attacks in Punjab may wel undermine its prestige as a ‘party of law and order’, and while many Punjabis with whom I have spoken continued to support talks with the Pakistani Taleban even after they began to attack Punjab, it is not certain that this wil continue if they kil more and more innocent people and target such beloved sites as Data Ganj Baksh.
The PML(N)’s support for talks and distancing from the US form part of a strategy, emphasized to me by the PML(N)’s Information Secretary, Ehsan Iqbal, of seeking to undermine both the Pakistani Taleban and the Jamaat Islami by drawing away their supporters into mainstream politics. PML(N) leaders estimate that in the February 2008 elections, which the Jamaat boycotted, 40 per cent of Jamaat voters nonetheless turned up to vote PML(N).
The party is making no visible headway in winning over the violent radicals, who have long since moved beyond the reach of Pakistani mainstream politics. As regards the Jamaat, however, this strategy does seem to have had considerable success; and to judge by my interviews, the soaring popularity of the PML(N) in opinion pol s in 2008 – 9 owed a good deal to the perception that the Sharifs ‘would defend Pakistani interests against America, not sel them like Musharraf and Zardari’, as a Lahori shopkeeper told me. This perception was also boosting PML(N) popularity in the NWFP, increasing the party’s chances of permanently expanding beyond its Punjabi base.