ISLAMABAD, 21 August 2004 — Four years as Pakistan’s high-profile finance minister won Shaukat Aziz no political accolades. However most saw him as a competent technocrat performing well under military rule. By Aug. 25 Shaukat will be where many had predicted and he had aspired to be. Barring any catastrophe he is to be sworn in as Pakistan’s 23rd prime minister. He will, however, be a prime minister with a difference. He will occupy the slot without any political assets. His predecessors, like Nawaz Sharif or Mohammad Khan Junejo, promoted by the establishment had at least some political constituency of their own.
He becomes prime minister through the constitutional election process. Yet by virtue of ready-made political constituencies Shaukat is riding on derivative political capital. For now his only constituency is the business class. It is an important yet unreliable constituency. It opts for convenience, not conviction and commitment.
During his planned 3-year term as prime minister, any major turn around in Shaukat’s political credentials appears unlikely. According to the establishment’s plan for running national affairs, politics and governance will be divided. Shaukat’s “job description” will involve day-to-day running of the federal bureaucracy. He will have to oversee execution of policy more effectively. He will be the chief executive who will engage with the outside world as Pakistan’s official leader, second only to president. At home his influence in the party, even while in office, may remain restricted to what the PML president “desires.”
Shaukat the technocrat will be tasked to better manage governance nationwide. Yet politically he will be positioned to exert influence in federal matters. NWFP and Balochistan are opposition and semi-opposition governments. An MQM— dominated Sindh setup will resist federal interference on substantive matters. In Punjab sits the future aspirant for the prime minister’s slot.
Also Shaukat Aziz’s political mandate as prime minister will be curtailed. According to the establishment’s plan the president of the Pakistan Muslim League, under its “guidance” will handle the political affairs of the country. Foremost the PML President Shujaat, experienced and with indigenous political sharpness, will be attempting to turn PML, an establishment-created “paper party” into an authentic party. The man with a political constituency, the PML president and the man with the purse strings of the development funds, he will ostensibly be more relevant for the parliamentarians.
No matter how talented a Shaukat Aziz Cabinet maybe, Shujaat in the PML presidential slot will remain a high-profile political player in the establishment-created political landscape. He will also be engaged in political trouble-shooting on behalf of the federation attempting to calm the anger of those nationalist leaders from Balochistan and Sindh who are getting increasingly alienated from the center.
Interestingly the only other example of a civilian prime minister in recent years who did not hold the party president’s office was Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali. He survived for less than two years as prime minister. The establishment politely sent him packing given his weakness in “governing” and growing tensions between him and the PML Cabinet and parliamentarians.
Shaukat does not risk losing establishment’s support. Within the functional parameters granted to him by the establishment, he will perform with honesty and competence. Yet expansion of his political power base is not assured. His mandate is better management. The new troika ruling arrangement does not anticipate Shaukat’s involvement in political constituencies. The president remains the fulcrum of state power. The controlled hence abnormal political process in Pakistan faces no immediate threat of disruption. It does however raise two critical questions. One, remaining with this largely establishment-controlled democracy can the 8-point agenda, that Gen. Musharraf had articulated and the public had supported in October 1999, be implemented. Two, can the current dispensation produce new political forces that can erase existing public support for the PPP and PML (N) leadership.
While there are few who would disagree with the goals for Pakistan that Gen. Musharraf spelt out in the Aug. 16 television program Roo-Baroo, questions remain about the means being adopted to achieve those goals. Foremost is the question of “fair play” in addressing political issues. Issues range from opting for a “quid-pro quo” Cabinet that hands out slots to even NAB-listed coalition partners, to the continued imprisonment of Asif Ali Zardari and the excessive punishment awarded to MNA Javed Hashmi. Similarly the decision to opt for selective accountability through NAB, for pro-MQM indulgence in Sindh and the denial to PPP their valid place in the politics of Sindh, raise questions of moral legitimacy. Other gathering political storms in any civil-military confrontation in Balochistan and in NWFP over the Jamaat-i-Islami’s support to Al-Qaeda, are also worrying.
Chaudary Shujaat in his brief stint as a prime minister took the political route to addressing these issues. He held the first government-MMA meeting on Wana in which the MMA supported the government’s registration of foreigners, opened dialogue with the Baloch leaders, countered the interior minister’s accusation against the JI, opened dialogue with PML (N) members and called for accountability of ministers and officials.
Yet Shujaat has not resolved any of these critical issues. Numerous challenges will stare Shaukat Aziz in the face as he takes over as prime minister; Cabinet formation, constructive engagement with the opposition including the PPP leadership, providing PPP the slot of the opposition leader in the Senate, defusing political crisis in Balochistan and through institutional means addressing their concerns, countering double standards over accountability and effectively communicating the compulsions of the anti-terrorism policy. Whatever his narrowly defined mandate maybe, as the PML prime minister, Shaukat Aziz will have to address these issues. The technocrat prime minister will have to enter the political fray, in partnership with his party president. Economic progress is crucial; yet alone it does not bring success in governance or legitimacy to a political system. Governance is a multidimensional challenge. It flows from “fair play” in all spheres of governance and politics. Above all “fair play” is the solid underpinning that gives sustainability and legitimacy to a system. For now that is missing.
— Nasim Zehra is an Islamabad-based security analyst and fellow of the Harvard University Asia Center.
