Mayank Chhaya-
Pakistan is entering yet another potentially turbulent phase in its on-again, off-again democracy with the midnight ouster of its Prime Minister Imran Khan on Saturday.
A 14-hour back and forth between the opposition and Khan’s ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party preceded a no-confidence vote which eventually resulted in 174-0 in a 342-member National Assembly. Khan has already called on his supporters to take to the streets in defiance signaling the prospects of violence.
Shehbaz Sharif, the joint opposition’s candidate for prime minister, said the “new regime would not indulge politics of revenge”.
“I don’t want to go back to the bitterness of the past. We want to forget them and move forward. We will not take revenge or do an injustice; we will not send people to jail for no reason, law and justice will take its course,” Sharif, who is the younger brother of former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, said. If he does indeed become prime minister there would be expectations that Nawaz Sharif could return from his exile in London. Nawaz Sharif has been living in London for the last two years since he was released from prison on charges of corruption. The elder Sharif was prime minister three times.
Like his brother, Shehbaz Sharif too had to go into exile in 2000 after a military coup. He returned to Pakistan in 2007 to resume his political career as the chief minister of Punjab. The younger Sharif and would-be prime minister too have been embroiled in many corruption allegations. The Sharif brothers have dismissed the charges as “politically motivated” and “vendetta.”
Since Shehbaz Sharif is being supported by a combined opposition, of which his Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) or PML-N is one constituent, he is expected to have little maneuvering room to carry out his vision of Pakistan. The PML-N’s website quoted Shehbaz Sharif as saying that it was “an epoch-making day.”
“Today, politics of lies, deceit, and allegations have been buried. People of Pakistan have won,” he said.
If things go as planned Sharif will be Pakistan’s 23rd prime minister but expectations of his longevity are running low given Pakistan’s forever politics of absurd uncertainties. The joint opposition has been generally steadfast in projecting him as Khan’s successor.
If he does indeed become prime minister he will inherit a desperate economy, a weakening currency, high inflation, and fast depleting foreign exchange reserves.
One major advantage that Sharif will have is that China, Pakistan’s looming benefactor, sees him very favorably. Beijing was particularly pleased with Sharif’s style of executing projects under the highly ambitious China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) initiative. It is possible that China will step in to help any Sharif dispensation since they had praised “Punjab speed” while executing infrastructure projects such as Pakistan’s first modern mass transport system.
Of course, the elephant in the room will remain in the form of the country’s omnipotent army which was known to be deeply antagonistic towards Nawaz Sharif. It has been reported that Shehbaz Sharif has cultivated better relations with the military and night managed to persuade them to support him.
The Sharifs are members of one of Pakistan’s wealthiest families which had a reputation in the 1990s to be “dollar billionaires”. It is not clear whether they still have that level of wealth given some terrible downs in their fortunes.
