‘Sharif’s sweaty hands brought army to the capital’

• Report links army’s arrival in Islamabad with Sharif ‘losing hold’ while government officials term move as an anti-Taliban measure

LONDON

ONLINE

According to a report published in Financial Times on Thursday, Pakistan’s federal government officials have described the decision to deploy army in Islamabad as the latest step in a two-month-old military campaign against Taliban while Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s opponents have described the decision as an attempt to block Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)’s anti-government protest in Islamabad on August 14, interpreting the move as a sign that “Sharif is nervous about his hold on power”.

While the premier has risked handing an expanded role in policymaking to the generals who have ruled Pakistan for almost half of its 67 years of existence as an independent state, senior members of the government are adamant that the deployment was aimed at blocking Taliban reprisals for army attacks targeting the militants in the North Waziristan Agency (NWA), the report stated.

“What you are seeing effectively is the government conceding that their survival depends on the military’s support. This decision will be widely seen as a total failure of the government,” said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a commentator on national security and politics. “The average Pakistani sees this decision as an act of panic because things are looking so bad.”

In the meanwhile, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Farhatullah Babar has warned, “The decision is pregnant with serious consequences for the people and the country as it means not only failure of the civil administration but also total suspension of the jurisdiction of the high courts.”

The army is to be deployed under Article 245 of the Constitution, which bars individuals from challenging the army’s actions in court.

“Nawaz Sharif does not seem interested in Pakistan,” the report quoted Saeed Qureshi, an Islamabad college student, as saying. “At a time when Pakistan is at war and there is an emerging internal crisis, he takes time to visit Saudi Arabia. This is pathetic.”

On the other hand, PTI Chairman Imran Khan has said that he was well placed to win support from the “many Pakistanis who are miserable and fed up with a major energy crisis and unemployment”.

In recent months, Khan has campaigned for investigations into the 2013 elections, which he says was rigged by Sharif’s PML-N.

“We tried to go through the legal channels to expose this but the legal channels have been exhausted,” said Khan in an FT interview. “We had said we will be out on the streets after exhausting the legal channels and that is our plan.”

The report has described many ordinary Pakistanis to be disillusioned with Sharif. In the poor Barakahu neighbourhood on the outskirts of Islamabad, Faqeer Khattak, a truck driver who voted for the PML-N last year, echoes common complaints about power cuts and electrical appliances being damaged by unreliable electricity supplies.

“Our fridge broke down and we now use it for storing shoes and clothes,” he said, according to the report. “I will never vote for this party again because they have failed to improve conditions in Pakistan.”