The PML-N victory

How the Sharifs got their politics ‘right’ in Punjab

The mandate from Punjab has been delivered for the rest of Pakistan: the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) shall govern for the next five years. With a total of 124 seats out of 272 seats secured, 117 of which were from Punjab, the PML-N is only shy of 13 for a simple majority. So, to rule the roost all it requires is either a marginal coalition or a handful of the 31 independents joining it.

While analysts predicted a PML-N majority in the next parliament, not even the PML-N’s insiders were expecting such outright dominance.

For a campaign run by distributing tigers, hiring the ‘One-Pound Fish’ guy to sing its campaign song, promising bullet trains and more motorways, reminding people of nuclear blasts and building a metro bus track – overtly there appeared to be little for delivering much needed services to the voter. Or perhaps not. Pitched up against the glamour of the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf (PTI) support base, middle class youths entering the political arena for a first time and built around the personal charisma of Imran Khan, the PML-N, the party of industrialists and traders, by a remarkable turnaround somehow managed to become the Punjabi working classes party on election day. As the votes turned out, especially in Lahore, the ‘class divide’ as it were came out strongly. Posh localities had voted staunchly for the ‘balla’, while more working class areas had gone for the ‘sher’.

Even more interesting to observe was that after the PML-N was given a popular mandate by the masses, it was the business community of Pakistan that was celebrating the most. Each chamber of commerce in the country came out with statements welcoming the new government and the Karachi Stock Exchange jumped to a record high. Mian Mansha, a close confidant to the Sharif’s and arguably Pakistan’s richest man, had only recently advocated more laissez faire economics. Amidst his populist – apparently pro-people rhetoric – the younger Sharif keenly reminds people of the “suffering that the Sharif family had to undergo during the Bhutto nationalization” and how “they built up their industrial (and political) empire again from the scratch.” The Sharif periods in the 1990s could economically be defined as “privitisation with a vengeance”.

Looking on as an outsider, the result appears a contradiction. For the Sharif’s, their political party is run just like their businesses: placing close family in the right places. Their political empire and business empire feed into each other. The Sharif families decision to join the Gen Zia cabinet was nothing but a prudent choice. Entering politics fulltime was also nothing but. By ensuring they were in power – or close to power – the family could ensure that no one could “take away their businesses like Bhutto” nor could anyone “bleed them through taxation.” Like most political families in the subcontinent, politics for the Sharifs is fundamentally about securing their palaces and businesses.

In shifting the burden of the electricity crisis on the Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP), the PML-N made a tactical calculation that went in its favour. While for many a leftist, Shahbaz Sharif’s rendition of Habib Jalib’s Dastoor was an affront to the original, the younger Sharif’s cry of “Punjab being oppressed by the federation” rang a chord with the Punjabi voter base, instructed well in the manual of “hating everything Zardari.” Banking on people forgetting that it was the PML-N that set the power sector on the downward spiral in the 1990s, or that in 2010, Shahbaz Sharif won the approval from the Council of Common Interest (CCI) to allow provincial government to approve power projects yet did precious little to add to the province’s capacity, the PML-N played its cards right. As the Rs5 billion allotted to the Punjab Energy Ministry lapsed each year, funds continue to be channeled into the chief minister’s pet projects: laptops, Daanish schools and the metro bus.

The Sharifs count on forgetting their role in some of the crises that beset modern day Pakistan. Forgotten is how their great patron – and the integral pawn in their rise to economic and political dominance – was the much reviled Gen Zia, responsible among other things for the Taliban of today. Forgotten also is how it was the Sharif’s acceptance of the IMF’s plan to ‘unbundle’ WAPDA in their first tenure that caused the circular debt crisis at the centre of Pakistan’s power woes. Or that the privitisation of the Pakistan Railways was curbed by mass protests as 40,000 railways employees were forcibly retired and investment pulled out of the now frail national asset during their second tenure. The last two periods of Sharif governance was known for loan write offs to big capitalists. Perhaps another of the reasons why businessmen are happy.

The PML-N also understands the nature of the post-colonial state: at the top of the governance ladder, it pursues neoliberal economic paradigms and big projects; on the bottom tier, it combines managing disputes at the level of thana, katchery, panchayat and patwari with micro level service provision. Its politics fell in line with the paradigms set by the colonial state in the Punjab since the 1880s – where caste-based institutions were set up to regulate land tenure and law and order. Local level PML-N workers are adept at managing thana-katcheri disputes. The PML-N MPAs of choice were also able to get projects in demand in place in the months leading up to the election: such as approving graveyards, building sewerage pipes and constructing roads.

Combining mega-projects such as the Rs30 billion-plus metro bus service with image building programs such as the laptops scheme, the yellow cab scheme, the sasti roti scheme and the Daanish schools, the PML-N projected a ‘can-do’ form of governance – bordering on the limits of permissible from the legal standpoint. The metro bus approval was reminiscent of the motorway approval: while the motorway from Lahore to Islamabad was missing from the Planning Commission’s proposals when pushed through in 45 days, Lahore’s metro bus service was missing from the Lahore Master Plan 2020 and approved in a “record” one night.

After winning a strong majority, Sharif has continued to tread the policy of reconciliation followed during the last five years by the PPP. Cases in point: visiting Imran Khan in hospital, and suggesting a ‘friendly’ cricket match once Imran recovers, and pledging to respect the PTI’s mandate in KP, and beyond our borders asking Manmohan Singh to attend his oath-taking ceremony. These are good signs – but indicate nothing more than a consensus amongst the political and economic elites on letting things run smoothly.

The point is: the PML-N got its politics right in this election.

And that is exactly what the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf (PTI) middle class support base is unable to fathom. With the PTI having successfully mobilised an entirely new class of people to the voting booth, they come with the baggage of having no sense of the political world outside the spaces they inhabit. So while all their friends and family in the Lahore DHA and Cantt may have voted PTI, Bhatta Chowk and villages in the Burki area voted strongly PML-N. That made for a close election between Hamid Khan and Saad Rafique but it certainly was not massive rigging that produced the latter victory: it was the PTI’s inability to move beyond the limits of its class base.

Nonetheless, the result reminds one that two electoral reform agendas still need to be pursued: one, the curbing of campaign spending; two, the first past the post electoral system. Like the 1990 elections in which the PPP had only a marginal number of votes less than the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI) led by the Sharifs, the difference in votes between the PTI and the PML-N in a number of constituencies was rather insignificant. The sheer number of votes the PTI had secured merited more representation for it; but this change requires looking outside the British heritage of the Westminister model towards German and Scandinavian democracies.

But that is a subject for a more detailed discussion. For now, a party that is adept with managing the contradictions of the State and its political classes has managed to mobilize more people to cast a vote than those wearing the agenda – and T-shirts and other paraphernalia – of change. And we all know what is coming.

The writer is the general secretary (Lahore) of the Awami Workers Party. He is a journalist and a researcher. Contact: [email protected]