The enterprising establishment of Pakistan has curtain-raised a new episode of the “game of thrones” in the land of the pure by bringing back the ex-prime minister of Pakistan, Mian Nawaz Sharif–a declared fugitive by country’s judiciary—by facilitating him to end his self-imposed four-year-long exile.
In one of the previous episodes, Nawaz Sharif was disqualified from holding any public office by the Supreme Court of the country on graft charges in 2017. The following year he was sentenced to seven years prison for not disclosing the means of his immense wealth. However, Imran Khan, the prime minister at the time, had allowed him to travel abroad to receive medical treatment as the country purportedly could not find any cure to his dwindling health due to plummeting platelets count in his blood and constant chest pains. In a suspense-filled episode, Nawaz Sharif’s sentence was suspended on medical grounds, and he was facilitated to travel overseas for treatment on the condition that he would return within four weeks. But despite many social media counts of him being seen in lavish restaurants in London, Sharif maintained with the help of his doctors that he is not “fit” to travel back to Pakistan.
Ironically, the same Islamabad High Court which had issued a warrant for his arrest after he failed to return home in 2019, suspended those arrest warrants on Thursday (19th October 2023) extending him the facility of protective bail even before he landed in Islamabad.
Sharif was given the chartered flights to leave his London abode last week to reach Saudia Arabia—a country which is held in high esteem by both the Sharifs and the country’s establishment—for some usual “assurance and confirmation” meetings with the help of “trusted” allies in the establishment. Four days ago, he landed in Dubai—another stopover and dealmaking station between the exiled Pakistani politicians and the establishment, where he awaited the signing of the protective bail by the Islamabad High Court before embarking on his chartered plane to reach Islamabad for a warm welcome from the family and some commanding friends. It reminds me of those episodes when Benazir Bhutto was given the same kind of “assurances and confirmations” by the then “iron man” Gen. Pervaiz Musharraf and then rest for sure is recorded in the previous episodes of this Game of Thrones and memories of the viewers.
Like any previous episode, this is also another experiment of the establishment in the fraught political history of this nuclear-armed land of over 220 million people. The elections are supposed to be held in late January 2024, but like any script writer, the establishment has launched this proverbial old sheep in the new clothing to make sure that at least he can make create an atmosphere where they can “engineer” a way to overshadow the public demand by presenting a new “super Hero” who can bring the petrol and dollar prices down, help raise the stock market of the country above 50,000 points and can secure enough “guarantee money” from the “trusted” friends to fill the foreign reserves so that country can borrow more money from international donors including of course IMF.
This superhero is portrayed to do all of these things in the backdrop of protests which have frequently erupted in the streets over Imran Khan’s removal, rising prices, and contempt toward the country’s most powerful Khaki establishment – which Khan claims to have orchestrated his ouster in collaboration with the US administration, which both the US and the military denies vehemently.
Image: The New York Times