Real leaders

For too many people in Pakistan, the potential of a better country can only be achieved through a single individual. This is a staggering and remarkable truth in modern Pakistan.
How is this a truth? Well, go ahead. Try to imagine a PML-N without Nawaz Sharif. For starters, Maryam Nawaz Sharif, or Hamza Shahbaz Sharif, or Shahbaz Sharif himself would first have to decide whether to change the party’s name or not. After all that ‘N’, which has now spawned a new set of words, verbs, nouns and adjectives, actually stands for ‘Nawaz’. The derisive term angry young people who don’t like ‘Nawaz’ is the word Noora as a derivative of ‘Noon’, itself, a derivative of ‘N’.
There’s plenty more where all this comes from, but the bottom line is that without Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the mere concept of the PML-N would be shaken to the core. Half the cabinet would be out of jobs and the other half would have trouble getting elected without brand ‘Nawaz’. I didn’t claim this is a pleasant truth. I claimed it is a remarkable and staggering one.
Let us turn our eye now to the self-righteous hordes that we have all come to love and enjoy these last few months, those indispensible saviours of Pakistan and Iqbaliat, our Insafians and Imranists. It is all about ‘real’ democracy and the end of ‘shehenshaiat’. What an enormous delusion.
Let us try to imagine a PTI without Imran Khan. Without naming my three favourite PTI leaders other than Imran Khan, let us imagine how many television appearances we would see from, let’s say, a passionate and honest dentist, the former CEO of a multinational (quick how many can you name?), or a former jiyala who became close to Shahbaz Sharif after serving in a provincial cabinet under Musharraf. These are the crème de la crème of PTI, three of the most honest, upright and decent MNAs elected in the 2013 election.
I can imagine all three being famous without Imran Khan, but only barely. And they would not have any chance to outright win an election for MNA. Let’s reach out further and name some names. Where would Naz Baloch be without Imran Khan? Fayyaz Chohan? Faisal Javed Khan? Sadaqat Abbasi? Murad Saeed? Shoukat Yusufzai? Andaleeb Abbas? Who are these people? They are PTI. They spend no less than ten hours a week on television explaining why we need change. I am a fan of almost every one of them. Some are dear friends. They would have no political existence without Imran Khan.
Let’s stop there, because although this truth applies to the entire political spectrum in Pakistan, and indeed many post-colonial democracies, the point is well made enough without digging into how well the PPP, PML-Q, MQM, JI, JUI-F, JUI-S and all others in the spectrum fit the framework.
The point is not to prove that individual cults exist in Pakistani politics, including in parties that claim to be ‘middle class’, or urban, or meritocracies. The point is that you can be middle class, and urban, and a meritocracy, while still being invested in an individual as a motivator, and inspiration, and a vehicle for national relevance. Aitzaz Ahsan, Sherry Rehman, Jahangir Tareen, Hamid Khan, Faisal Sabzwari, Khalid Maqbool Siddiqi, Ahsan Iqbal, and Zubair Umar are all outstanding individual talents, but every one of them would be quite happy to explain that their relevance and ability to do good has been dramatically enhanced by the leaders they have chosen to follow.
The real point, therefore, is not a flagellation of our political culture. The real point is that top-of-the-mountain, central, authoritative leadership is a deeply embedded and integral part of the democratic culture in Pakistan. As long as this is the case, the real point is that leaders need to act the part. The failure in Pakistan, especially for the last four months is not that second tier leadership has not reined in their bosses. They have tried. The real failure is that the bosses, who are supposed to be leaders, have yet to take a decision that matches the great stature and position that the people of Pakistan have awarded them.
Nawaz Sharif has been gifted the office of prime minister of Pakistan for the third time. Imran Khan has been gifted the trust and loyalty of millions of passionate and hardworking Pakistanis in a way unprecedented in recent memory in our great country. Have these two men been acting like leaders of a great country? Have they been – what’s the word we’re looking for here – leading? Yes. Have PM Sharif and Kaptaan Imran Khan been leading?
On the face of it, sure. Khan has led an incredible, rolling, almost unending protest now for almost four months. It is truly incredible. Meanwhile, PM Sharif has ducked and dived with great precision, to survive the Khanistas onslaught. But I wonder if this is real leadership. It seems more like survival on nightly news talk shows. It doesn’t feel like we are being led by great statesmen. It feels like we are being serenaded by the things we want to hear, deeper and deeper into a paralysis that predates all the hoopla at the jalsas and at PM House.
The country faces deep and abiding challenges. The egos on these two men, PM Sharif and Kaptaan, are large, clearly. But are their egos more important than the country? Are they more important than economic growth? More pressing than the challenge of LeJ, Daish, Al-Qaeda and the TTP? More critical than the state of hospitals in Sargodha? Or schools in Charsadda? More important than Kashmir? They are not. This country is more important than the egos of men that we love, and have raised to the high heavens as our leaders. And that is why we now need these men to be leaders. Real leaders.
The PM has to stop being lulled into a sense of security by those whose entire political existence owes itself to how secure the PM is. The cabinet dynamic is wrought by a self-perpetuating set of mythologies about how big and indestructible the N in PML-N really is.
Imran Khan has to stop thinking of governing Pakistan as the ’92 World Cup. Self-belief alone is a destructive quality in a diverse world, that demands grace and flexibility as much as it does the steel of self-belief. In particular, he needs some time off from the SMSs and from Sheikh Rasheed.
The two men need to sit down together and agree to the judicial commission examining both deliberate fraud (someone’s design), and genuine electoral irregularities (products of systemic dysfunction). Ishaq Dar, Shah Mehmood Qureshi and all those who may increase friction, need to be out of the room for that meeting.
Once the commission is agreed, this country can move on. The PTI has a long and bright future as a transformative party in Pakistan and the PML-N, notwithstanding its limitations, is not going to disappear because of it. Since they may be working together, separately, for this country for a generation to come, they need to start the process now. It is not too late.
The writer is an analyst and commentator.