All in the family: Pakistan, politics and the Punjab
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We saw it all before when Nawaz Sharif, the elder brother of the current Prime Minister of Pakistan was the prime minister and the younger Sharif ruled Punjab, the country’s largest province representing 54% of the population-- no less than three times.
Never has the importance of Punjab been lost on any leader or party forming a government at the center, as it would mean greater resources to dole out economic and bureaucratic patronage to the members of the assemblies, better handle factional politics within the party and achieve stability. Punjab serves as the powerhouse of Pakistani politics, and as a pivotal region to shape politics elsewhere according to one’s own agenda. Punjab is the bastion, the driving seat and identity of the Sharif family.
Their rise to power and eminence happened when Lady Luck smiled on them in the initial years of the military regime of Zia ul Haq (1977-88). In attempting to create a new political order, Zia recruited a new class of politicians and also scavenged on the banned political parties to win over the second and third tier of leaders. His choice of Nawaz Sharif, a young industrialist from Lahore as the chief minister of Punjab after the party-less 1985 elections, was a historical aberration: never had any businessman or industrialist occupied this key position, as the landowning feudal class considered it its privilege to rule the province.
But those were very different times. Zia wanted to create a compliant and dependable political class to serve as a façade for ‘democracy.’ Nawaz Sharif fit the profile, as he had no independent political base to even think of challenging his benefactors. On the other hand, he was zealously eager to advance the interests of the Zia regime in countering the Pakistan Peoples Party, a looming political threat.
So big is the spoil system of the Punjab that any crafty proxy chief minister can use it to become a powerful player in the game of Pakistani politics.
Rasul Bakhsh Rais
When Zia died in a mysterious plane crash in August 1988, Sharif was retained as the chief minister of Punjab. While in power, Nawaz Sharif achieved remarkable political stature in his own right without crutches and behind-the-scenes support. After 1993, he was his own master and a national leader to be reckoned with. Many factors worked in his favor—personal warmth, gentleness and the art of expanding influence. In making alliances with the political families of the Punjab and the rest of the country, he used a business model of politics. In a nutshell, it meant mutual benefit, give and take, bargaining and sharing the pie and spoils of power but controlling the central space of the political market—the party and the Punjab.
Never have the Sharifs trusted any other political family of the province or any of the central figures of the PMLN to govern the Punjab when they had the power and privilege to do so. So big is the spoil system of the Punjab that any crafty proxy chief minister can use it to become a powerful player in the game of Pakistani politics.
Once again, the Sharifs have played a masterstroke in keeping the Punjab within the family with the next elections in mind, no matter what the critics say about the dynastic character of the dispensation. There is another reason, the two major political dynasties—the Zardaris and Sharifs-- have launched their second generation in the power game—Bilawal Zardari-Bhutto as the Foreign Minister and Hamza Sharif as the Chief Minister of the Punjab. To be fair, the PMLN had more party-based seats in the Punjab Assembly than the PTI and should have the first call to form the government, but who cares about parliamentary, democratic norms in the no-holds-barred rough politics of Pakistan. The ouster of Imran Khan who ruled Punjab from Islamabad through an incompetent proxy chief minister, Usman Buzdar, has returned the Punjab back to the Sharif family.
In dysfunctional democracies, elite-based and elite driven parties need patriarchs to stay coherent, for they play an authoritative role in mediating conflicts of factional interests and provide leadership in building coalitions. The Sharifs have proved deft in these matters, as they have the benefit of experience of being at the center of power politics for more than four decades. But all power in the family may also alienate party workers and people, and work to the advantage of their challenger, Imran Khan and his narrative of corrupt dynastic politics. These are quite interesting times, indeed.
- Rasul Bakhsh Rais is Professor of Political Science in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, LUMS, Lahore. His latest book is “Islam, Ethnicity and Power Politics: Constructing Pakistan’s National Identity” (Oxford University Press, 2017). Twitter: @RasulRais
