PM wrote history of showing patience

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Saturday named General Qamar Javed Bajwa as the Chief of Army Staff and General Zubair Mehmood Hayat as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (CJCSC) for three-year tenure each.

The premier single-handed made the monumental decision, defying all kinds of assumptions, guessing game, persuasions and lobbying. The confidentiality he maintained over his final choice did not let anybody have any idea about it.

Lt-Gen Ashfaq Nadeem, commander of Multan Corps, and Lt-Gen Javed Iqbal Ramday, commander of Bahawalpur Corps, were superseded.

Both the elevated generals are veteran, accomplished soldiers, who have served the Pakistan Army in various critical senior positions during their careers.

Gen Bajwa was the commander of 10 Corps of Rawalpindi during the protest sit-ins of 2014. Currently he was the Inspector General of Training and Evaluation at the General Headquarters (GHQ), the same position that outgoing army chief Gen Raheel Sharif had held when he was promoted to this slot in November 2013.  At present, Gen Hayat was the Chief of General Staff (CGS), an office considered most important in the Pakistan Army.

Gen Bajwa is the fourth army chief from the Baloch Regiment with the previous generals being Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, Mirza Aslam Beg and Yahya Khan.

It is gathered that the prime minister had decided about his picks much earlier but that he make big announcement just a couple of days before the new appointees would assume charge.

While everyone was in an indecent haste to know the next army chief, the prime minister took his time to take a decision. He repeated the 2013 exercise when he had announced the new army chief just two days before the next top commander was to take office on November 29.

When Gen Raheel Sharif was promoted to the rank of the army chief, he had stood on number three of the seniority list. Gen Haroon Aslam had occupied the second position while Gen Rashad Mehmood, who was later nominated as the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Committee in 2013, was the senior most officer. After these appointments, Haroon Aslam had called it a day as per the tradition followed in the army in the case of supersession.

The prime minister’s selection of any senior general fromthe list forwarded to him by the defence ministry for appointment as the army chief is his discretion as bestowed by the Constitution.

Nawaz Sharif used this exclusive power for the third time as prime minister. Previously, he had chosen Musharraf and Raheel Sharif.

The prime minister strictly kept his cards close to his chest and did not share the name of the new army chief even with any of his closest aides or senior federal ministers. He maintained complete secrecy over his choice.

It is stated that the premier weighed various pros and cons while making these nominations. The dossiers and roles of all the aspirants and the intelligence reports about them were closely scrutinized to reach the determination.

Despite having apparently good relations with the outgoing army chief over the past three years, the Nawaz Sharif government remained on tenterhooks throughout this period for a variety of reasons.

At several points of time, the prime minister wrote a new history of exhibiting extraordinary patience and tolerance, when faced with heavily irritating odds, simply to avert derailment of the democratic dispensation as well as his massive development agenda involving billions of dollars. Never did he demonstrate such exceptional endurance during his previous two stints as the prime minister.

He thus calculatingly quashed a perennial charge leveled against him by his detractors that he picks up fights with army chief every time he becomes the chief executive. On many occasions did a gross difference of opinion crop up between the two Sharifs, but the breaking point was always prudently forestalled despite frantic efforts by certain desperate elements to rock the boat.

While Raheel Sharif is being showered lavish kudos he deserves, it is a hard fact that during his term, the army’s role in domestic and external affairs, the exclusive domain of the civilian government, became more overpowering, pronounced and vigorous. Mostly it was confined to the behind-the-scenes but at times it became too obvious. The civilian supremacy, as enshrined in the Constitution, was turned into a far cry.

Contrary to his track record, Nawaz Sharif never went public with any serious differences with the khaki although he, when pushed to the wall, had always publicly spoken about any such row during his previous tenures.