Sharif's Fiefdom On Fire

IN January this year, Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif was bold enough to claim that he would "rule for twenty years". Today, he's not sure whether he will finish the year in one piece. What's going on in Pakistan? Sharif had reason to be confident. The Constitution had been amended to get rid of the President's discretionary powers to dismiss a government and to silence dissent within Parliament. Sharif had fought a pitched battle with the chief justice of the supreme court, Sajjad Ali Shah, and the president, Farooq Leghari, and forced their exit. His younger brother Shahbaz Sharif ruled the roost in Punjab province. His coalition alliances with the Awami National Party (ANP) in the North West Frontier Province, the Mohajir Qaumi Movement (MQM) in Sindh and the Balochistan National Party (BNP) in Balochistan remained strong. Sharif was particularly pleased that Benazir Bhutto was on the run, trying to fend off a dozen corruption charges in the courts of Pakistan, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, which left her no time for opposition.

But the nuclear tests on May 28 have plunged Sharif into deep waters because he doesn't know how to cope with their fallout. He has made a series of grave miscalculations and blunders which have badly eroded his support base and left him dangling by a thread.

Sharif alienated a million Pakistanis when he froze their foreign currency deposits worth $11 billion on May 28. Another million or so Pakistanis were badly hurt when the stockmarket crashed and wiped out their lives' savings. Both sections of well-to-do Pakistanis formed the core of Sharif's support group among the trading, professional and business elites of the country.

Sharif's misplaced concreteness was acutely demonstrated when he unveiled a business-as-usual budget for 1998-99 a mere 15 days after the nuclear tests. The budget forecast a highly unrealistic increase in GDP, a decrease in the fiscal deficit, a hefty increase in exports and a drastic reduction in imports. On a more heroic scale, it forecast an increase of about Rs 60 billion in additional tax revenues. All forecasts were flatly rejected by independent economists. Worse, Sharif balanced his figures by projecting an inflow of $3.2 billion in foreign assistance during the year. When asked for the source of such funds in view of the sweeping sanctions imposed on Pakistan, Sharif had no answers. In the event, the government was forced to revise every major target in July by means of a "mini-budget". This has imposed fresh hardship on the people and hurt Sharif's credibility enormously.

Meanwhile, Sharif finds himself besieged on other fronts. His alliance with the ANP was shredded when he went back on his word to rename NWFP as Pakhtunkhwa (the land of the Pakhtuns). His coalition government in Balochistan came unstuck when his party stalwarts conspired in the provincial chief minister's ouster. His alliance with the MQM is on the verge of breaking down following Islamabad's decision to crack down on MQM-inspired terrorism in Karachi. Sharif exacerbated regional tensions when he announced his intention to build the Kalabagh Dam without first forging a federal consensus over the issue. Sindh, Balochistan and NWFP are bitterly opposed to the dam for various reasons. The "nationalists", which include the ANP, BNP and other groups, accuse the Punjabi prime minister of seeking to ram the dam down their throats. They have now formed a united front to oppose "Punjabi hegemony".

The most worrying part for Sharif is Benazir's decision to join the nationalist ranks. By playing her "Sindh card" at a massive anti-Punjab rally in Sindh on August 10, Benazir has sent an unmistakable signal to the Pakistan army: if she is pushed to the wall (as she has been done by Sharif), she will take no responsibility for the erosion of federal unity. She has called for the ouster of Sharif and the establishment of a "national" government.

As if all these headaches weren't enough, Sharif has also opened himself to charges of corruption and misuse of power. The point of contention is a sprawling farmstead recently built by the Sharif family at Raiwind on the outskirts of Lahore. It is alleged that hundreds of millions of rupees from public funds were spent on developing the 1,700-acre farm. Sharif hasn't denied the charges but insists that he is entitled to do so because the farm has been classified as "the prime minister's house". The fundamentalist Jamaat-i-Islami calls the farm Sharif's "Raiwind Estate" (as opposed to Benazir's "Surrey Estate") and is demanding that the Sharif family, which owes Rs 10 billion to the banks, explain the source of its wealth. Most opposition parties are continuing to mount thunderous demonstrations exploiting the issue.

But the worst is still to come. Sharif is under pressure from the United States to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) if he wishes to be bailed out of his economic distress by the IMF. The problem is that Sharif is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. If Sharif signs the CTBT, the US will ease the sanctions and the IMF will come back with a bail-out package. But there will still be costs to pay. The signing of the CTBT will be unpopular with strong vested interests in the hawkish ideological establishment of Pakistan. The IMF's economic package will also entail severe conditionalities like the imposition of a hefty sales tax, a steep increase in utility rates, drastic cuts in government expenditures and a substantial devaluation of the rupee. This will impose economic strains all round. However, if Sharif doesn't sign the CTBT, Pakistan will face financial default, followed by even greater economic sacrifices from all sections of the country.

Time is running out on Sharif even as he ponders the difficult choices before him. From the Jamaat-i-Islami and the provincial nationalist parties to Benazir's PPP and Leghari's newly launched Millat Party, the opposition is ganging up and girding its loins for a mighty heave-ho. With urban Pakistan showering abuse on the government, a single spark could light a prairie fire.

A couple of weeks ago, the army chief, General Jehangir Karamat, advised patience with the government's predicament and sounded a note of caution against "vested interests goading the army to go for a quick-fix solution". The question on everybody's lips is: if and when the people's patience with Sharif runs out, what will Karamat do?

(The writer is editor of the Friday Times, Lahore.)