Maulvi Nawaz’s acrobatics

Over these days, Mian Nawaz Sharif, the supremo of his own PML faction, is showing himself in a very combative mood, roaring like a bull in a china shop, huffing and puffing madly, challenging each and all to a confrontation. A lion has flung into the arena, he growls and fumes he would put all in their right places. Spare he would none whoever be it, thunders this proven paper tiger, seemingly sharing as well the Indians’ overriding hunger to demolish the Pakistani military and the Americans’ driving thirst to reduce the Pakistani army into an orderly of the American warlords and the ISI into a shoeshine boy of their CIA. But pare down his mad ravings against the military, and his whole contrivance boils down essentially to a personal grouse and vindictiveness against a military general who he himself had brought up to head the army and latterly crowned additionally with the cap of the chief of the joint chiefs of staff committee to be the country’s top soldier, deeming him to be a safe bet for his rule. Yet he toppled him in a coup, and now he wants his head at any cost. Pervez Musharraf he says had violated the constitution and yet he was presented the guard of honour at the presidency on his departure.

But what he conveniently glosses over is that it was the same general with whom he had cut an ignoble deal to seek reprieve and hit the comfortable foreign shores to escape the rigours of imprisonment and jailed life.But then he is no Nelson Mandela, a universally acclaimed leader of tremendous stature and a consummate statesman of sterling qualities, who bore with the torture of his White jailors for nearly thirty years of incarceration but refused to bow down or leave the country for the sake of his people’s cause. And when released, he refused to surrender to his personal grouses and grudges, rejected scornfully taking the cudgels against his erstwhile White tormentors and stood up bravely for his nation’s unity and cohesion.

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• Maulvi Nawaz Sharif ugly past is too discouraging too dissuading. His wholesale sallies against the military and the agencies are warming up no street hearts, though the people want both to work hard professionally in the best martial tradition to become the defenders of the nation truly and give them a real sense of security and safety.

But Nawaz is no statesman. He is just a small man with a small mind, though having inebriating pretences of tallness, no lesser promoted in him by a bevy of “fawning” media people. He is not the one wise enough to know the stupidity of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. He even wouldn’t know what it really means. For, he is no Recep Tayyip Erdogan, either. When Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party romped home in the 2000 national election, the Turkish generals were averse to it and the judiciary too was opposed to it for its Islamic religious credentials, even though moderate. Yet instead of getting into confrontation with them and returning their provocations with provocations, he focused single-mindedly on the betterment of his people’s lot with far-reaching economic reforms, sagacious administrative measures and a vibrant foreign policy. The resultant people power on his back has not only driven his party into office for the third term but has enfeebled cripplingly the domineering generals and the overbearing judiciary of the constitutional court. But then Nawaz is not even Hugo Chavez, the West’s much-reviled president of Venezuela. When in a CIA-engineered coup, in 2000, he was ousted, the people braving military tanks and soldiers stormed into the presidential office, physically threw out the proxy the coup-makers had installed in his place, and in less than 47 hours reinstated Chavez to his post. But when Nawaz was ousted, no streets burst out with people’s protest. Rather, there was a widespread sense of public relief. There were, instead, celebrations, though truthfully mostly by his opponents. The people at large were nonetheless wholly apathetic to his ouster. And they indeed had no reason to mourn as he had spent away the whole capital of his “heavy mandate” in beefing up his own political muscle and acquiring all the trappings of an authoritarian rule, including an attempt to be the nation’s lifelong Ameerul Momneen, a law unto himself. Not in alleviating the people’s depressing lot.No wonder, he is now talking to an empty street. He is promising moon. But his ugly past is too discouraging and too dissuading. His wholesale sallies against the military and the agencies are warming up no street hearts, though the people want both to work hard professionally in the best martial traditions to become the defenders of the nation truly and give them a real sense of security and safety.