ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will completely assume his demanding job as the chief executive as he flies back home on Saturday after 48 days’ stay in London in connection with his grave cardiac issue.
He underwent open heart surgery involving five bypasses on May 31, which means that he returns to Pakistan 39 days after his critical operation.
The prime minister was operated for Coronary Artery Bypass Graft, also called CABG or Cabbage, a procedure that uses veins and or arteries from other areas of the body to create new routes for blood to reach the heart muscle. The new pathways, called grafts, were grafted or sewn to the diseased vessel.
Even during his serious illness, he grappled with essential official assignments like the mandatory approval of federal budget, a day before his surgery, and kept issuing directions on matters that needed his immediate personal intervention and attention.
No official work was affected during his longest ever stay abroad as the prime minister as he kept receiving a stream of his cabinet colleagues and top officials. At times, he called some of them there to discuss key national issues.
Generally, in case of such a massive heart surgery doctors allow the patient air travel after at least four weeks if the operation and post-op recovery are normal. This is based on one’s personal experience when one had served as the attendant/translator of a close relative, who had five bypasses in a London hospital three years back. In this case, the initial recovery of the patient took a relatively long time, four weeks, to enable him to fly back home because he was a chronic smoker for 45 years, and had an acute respiratory problem, which took at least three days to control. The premier had no such habit or disease, and as a result, his recovery was satisfactory.
Contrary to the prime minister’s post-op routine, marked by his daily walk, this patient was averse to walk even a few yards as he was before the procedure. Those who have met Nawaz Sharif in London say he has been doing a regular walk, which, according to doctors, is beneficial for fast healing and normal functioning of the body.
Back home, this particular patient needed another four weeks to fully recuperate. But as he returned to Pakistan, he started his routine business to some extent. After the next few weeks, his output and hours to work increased, showing no signs that he has a huge critical surgery three years ago.
In the prime minister’s absence from Pakistan, Maryam Nawaz worked hard to informally assist the government. The main role was played by Finance Minister Senator Ishaq Dar. While Nawaz Sharif’s close relatives including his sons, Hussain and Hassan, and wife Begum Kalsoom, accompanied him in London, Maryam was asked to stay back in Pakistan.
A set of agenda-driven senseless, insensitive persons kept decimating disinformation on the social media that the premier in fact did not undergo a heart surgery and he stayed put in London to get rid of Panama leaks. But it is clear that this issue remained alive though with low intensity even during his stay in London, and has not yet died down.
As Nawaz Sharif reaches home, some issues like the appointment of the four members of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) are likely to be quickly resolved. The required spadework has been done by Senator Ishaq Dar, who ably ran the affairs of the government including the preparation, presentation and approval of the federal budget from the National Assembly. Also, due to the premier’s presence in Pakistan there may be some movement forward on the deadlocked talks over the formulation of consensus Terms of Reference (ToRs) for a judicial probe into the offshore companies identified in the Panama leaks or detected otherwise, written off bank loans and corruption.
Without taking the other opposition into confidence, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) have walked out of the 12-member bipartisan parliamentary committee, accusing the government side of lukewarm approach to their demands.
As usual, the PTI is enthusiastic to launch another mass agitation against the government on Panama Papers disclosures. But it will take another two weeks to set in motion its agitation as Imran Khan says he will announce a new organizational structure of the PTI on July 20 for the protest.
The PPP is also talking about the protest and joining the PTI’s bandwagon, but is half-hearted in teeing off a campaign. It is desperate, and rightly so, to revive its lost glory especially in Punjab where it is still in the political wilderness. Since his surgery, the prime minister had been eager to return home as soon as possible. There are indications that he may stay in Lahore for some time before coming to Islamabad.