When Mian Nawaz Sharif’s government was ousted in October 1999, largely due to his fascination with the thought of acquiring real power, the party he had studiously and determinedly built on the foundations of a strong anti-Bhutto sentiment (which the elections of 1970 had left as a dark legacy) was quickly reduced to a tattered and fractured entity. It once had been a force to reckon with. Not many now stood loyally behind the beleaguered and hounded leader of the party. But a few did go on to provide a leadership base to what was identified as Muslim League (N) which now is threatening to spearhead what is going to be the future opposition.
A large chunk of the original Nawaz-led Muslim League, after remaining in wilderness for a few months moved on to assemble under the secure and rewarding umbrella of the power-generating and power-managing Establishment. This familiar phenomenon had come into play twice in the past too. There had once been Field Marshal Ayub Khan’s Muslim League. As had subsequently been General Ziaul Haque’s Muslim League which can undeniably be regarded as the mother of the two Muslim Leagues of today – one that will in the historical perspective be regarded as General Pervez Musharraf’s Muslim League – and the other that is reminiscent of the Muslim League of the sixties that was known as the Council League, and that in the pre-PPP era provided the Ayub regime with its main opposition.
It was this League that Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah had headed in her ill-fated campaign to dethrone Field Marshal Ayub Khan. If that is hypothetically conceded as Nawaz League’s heritage – (and not the latter Muslim League of General Ziaul Haque), Mian Nawaz Sharif’s declared resolve to overthrow General Pervez Musharraf does have a noble precedence. A failed precedence though. Kings in history have always been overthrown by kings. And we do not know of any king who did not command an army. As for revolutions, there have not been many to emulate or simulate. Those in memory are the French one, the Lenin’s, the Mao’s and more recently the Khomeini’s.
Do we find amidst us the ideological fire-power that fuelled the French Revolution? Is there a Lenin, or a Mao or a Khomeini waiting in the ranks of our opposition for history’s call, to break loose and take the country by storm? Quite natural it is for Nawaz Sharif or Qazi Hussain Ahmed, or Imran Khan or even Benazir Bhutto to be fiercely wishing in the innermost recesses of their hearts that a grand revolution could emerge from their press conferences and drawing-rooms. But the facts of real life have not much to do with yearning-filled thinking.
This column was not intended to digress in the direction it has gone. The subject of Muslim League was chosen in lieu of what Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain the Q-League President has said regarding the prospects of his party in the forthcoming elections, and what the Musharraf-appointed Election Commission has ruled regarding the eligibility of the other League’s President – Mian Shahbaz Sharif. To yearn for and to expect a landslide victory in the elections is every major party’s right. And the Q-League is more than a major party.
It is the party to whose advantage the whole electoral scenario has been written. If it fails to benefit hugely from this advantage, it will be due to two possible reasons. The first that something totally unexpected may be happening beneath the surface, and may emerge on the 8th of January 2008. The second that the Q-League leadership commits unaffordable blunders in the area of judgement and the execution of plans. Granted the Q-League goes on to win as many seats as are required to stay in the run to be a major player in the government-forming exercise, but Chaudhry Shujaat Sahib has claimed that acquiring the two-third majority required for providing to the PCO, the parliamentary cover, is a certainty that no one should overlook. This does not send encouraging signals to those who are hoping against hope that the elections would be fair to an acceptable degree, and would not be allowed to degenerate into a farce. The looming apprehensions and fears in the ranks of the opposition are that the elections are going to be extensively doctored.
And the rejection of Mian Shahbaz’s nomination papers (so summarily and disdainfully) succeeds only in providing substance to these apprehensions. For the good of democracy it is hoped that the promised level playing field will be provided not just on paper, but on the ground too.
(This Column was first published on 03-12-2007)
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