Why Nawaz-Zardari relations nosedived

ISLAMABAD: Former President and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) chief Asif Ali Zardari harbours serious grievances, legitimate as well as unmerited, and faces serious political compulsions that have nosedived his relations with ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, giving rise to a confrontation between them.

First, Zardari has not forgotten, and may not forgive for quite some time Nawaz Sharif, who was the prime minister at the time, for the blunt refusal to meet him after the PPP chief’s hard-hitting remarks against army generals in June 2015. The ex-president felt let down due to the snub when he needed a session with him.

He was so much cornered and came under unprecedented pressure from the powerful quarters that he had to race out of Pakistan to stay abroad for the next eighteen months to let the situation calm down and change, creating a conducive environment for his unscathed return. He flew back to Pakistan in December 2016 three weeks after Raheel Sharif’s retirement as army chief.

From Nawaz Sharif’s viewpoint, it would have been wrongly interpreted had he received a top politician, who had just a day earlier subjected military generals to a blistering attack. He did not want to annoy the establishment.

In hindsight, Nawaz Sharif’s close aides repent the refusal and Railways Minister Khawaja Saad Rafique has expressed it too, but this is not sufficient to mitigate Zardari’s fury. In the view of ex-premier’s daughter Maryam, the meeting should not have been called off. She has also expressed the view that some decisions that Nawaz Sharif had taken as the prime minister were misread to paint him as a meek, submissive chief executive, which should have been avoided.

The second gravest complaint Zardari has against Nawaz Sharif is that he, as the prime minister, did not stop the Sindh Rangers’ actions against his buddy Dr Asim Hussain and other comrades. Rather, the PPP chief strongly believes that the former premier had approved and backed this stringent process. He also feels that what Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan was doing as the interior minister was fully supported by Nawaz Sharif.

However, this belief is misplaced and misleading. Since word go, the Rangers had a free hand to carry out the targeted operation. As far as its action against Dr Asim was concerned, a high-level meeting chaired by the then premier had raised objections to the arrest and made it public that the ex-petroleum minister has been unjustly treated. However, this was not considered enough by Zardari as he want his friend’s release straightaway.

The third grievance, which is valid and called for, relates to Nawaz Sharif’s policy regarding the ouster of Yousuf Raza Gilani as the prime minister by the Supreme Court on contempt charge for not writing a letter to the Swiss authorities to reopen the graft case against the former president. The PML-N is remorseful over this act.

Four, Zardari was and is seriously hurt over Nawaz Sharif’s appearance before the Supreme Court wearing the black coat of lawyers in the Memogate case. This was an unwise move, which was bound to provoke the PPP to retaliate in the future when the ousted premier will be in a deep trouble. It has now found an opportune time to hit back. However, it avoided becoming a petitioner in the apex court in the Panama case against the former premier.

Now when Nawaz Sharif has stated that Zardari was haranguing him only to please some others, the PPP has rightly reminded him that he was also making some happy when he had shown up in the apex court, refused meeting with its chief and worked for Gilani’s expulsion. It is a tit-for-tat.

Five, the former president is convinced that what the Rangers had been doing, crippling his Sindh government for years had the blessings of Nawaz Sharif-led federal administration. This is not true as any federal interference in the functioning of the paramilitary force might have impeded the task the force had been assigned. But it is also a fact that the Rangers went beyond its mandate specifically when it expanded its domain to corruption. Its findings that Dr Asim pilfered a whopping amount of Rs469 billion became a laughing stock as none believed this charge.

Six, Zardari faces a dire political compulsion to present himself as a tough man vis-à-vis the PML-N when general elections are only a few months away. Some PPP leaders particularly from Punjab think that if the former president breaks bread with Nawaz Sharif at this point of time, the party would be doomed in the fresh parliamentary polls. They staunchly believe that their electoral prospects would brighten if they lock horns with the PML-N till the grand exercise.

However, this is a totally fallacious assumption - the PPP declared several months ago that its policy of reconciliation with the PML-N is dead and gone, but results of successive by-elections amply showed that it did not fare any better. Rather, its fortunes plummeted to an embarrassing level as if it never existed in Punjab.

These leaders from Punjab, who are still to come out of political coma caused by their unparalleled battering in the 2013 elections, have miserably failed to sense that it was the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), and not the PML-N, which devoured its vote-bank. But they are obsessed with old politics of taking on the PML-N, and not the new reality, the PTI, which has replaced them at least in Punjab. They still don’t consider it appropriate to do introspection to know as to which party has inflicted the maximum damage to the PPP. Adding insult to injury is that a number of its senior stalwarts have switched to the PTI.

Despite the present war of words and conflict, a cooperative relationship, if any, will be worked out between the PML-N and PPP, maybe after the next elections. To presume that the PPP and PTI will ever join hands is erroneous because of the peculiar solo-flight policy of Imran Khan and bashing all and sundry day in and day out.

Regardless of the prevailing strife, the PML-N and PPP still do cooperate with each other on most urgent and essential matters within the parliament, of course after a lot of ado, which is necessary due to political pressures and advantages. Since the perception is that neither the PML-N nor the PPP wants postponement of upcoming parliamentary polls, they are expected to come to terms on the instant constitutional amendment providing for delimitations of constituencies and reallocation of seats on the basis of the provisional results of the new population census. Both will face similar disadvantages if the polls are sabotaged for any reason.