In-house change

Former chief minister Punjab Shahbaz Sharif, who is in London these days looking after his ill brother Nawaz Sharif, held a press conference on December 4, 2019 in which he backed the idea of an 'in-house change' to remove Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan. He hit out bitterly at the alleged 'National Accountability Bureau (NAB)-Niazi nexus' in the wake of his assets being frozen back home. He said the sooner the country gets rid of Imran Khan, the better it would be for the country. He argued an in-house change was a perfectly constitutional, legal way forward. Imran Khan Niazi, he continued, had become a burden. He tried to dispel the impression that this was purely about himself and his present troubles, rather he posited the notion that he was talking only from the point of view of what was in the national interest. Shahbaz Sharif referred to the recent proceedings in the Supreme Court where NAB counsel Naeem Bokhari wilted before the probing questions of the court and decided the wiser course was to withdraw his appeal against the bail granted to Shahbaz Sharif in two cases, the Ashiyana housing scheme and the Ramzan Sugar Mills cases. Incidentally, even former principal secretary to the prime minister Fawad Hassan Fawad got bail in the housing scheme case, but he remains incarcerated in other cases. Shahbaz Sharif described the accountability process against him as a political witch-hunt orchestrated through NAB by a vitriol-spewing, egotistical, divisive, angry, selfish Imran Khan who put his own interests before those of the country. He pointed out that NAB summoned him in the Saaf Paani case and arrested him in the Ashiyana case. After five and a half months in NAB's custody, he was sent on judicial remand and finally granted bail in February 2019. He lambasted the performance of Imran Khan's government, which had delivered little else than high inflation, an increase in unemployment, and reduced the economy to its "present poor state". He attempted to put the PM on the mat by asking where are those five million houses he promised to build. Shahbaz accused front benchers of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government with laundering money to acquire mansions in Dubai, Europe and the UK. Big personalities in the PTI, he claimed, had their employees as shareholders in their companies.

What was surprising about Shahbaz Sharif's support to the idea of an in-house change is that it contrasted sharply with the decisions of last week's opposition multi-party conference in which the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz's (PML-N's) secretary general Ahsan Iqbal demanded new, independent, fair and transparent elections as the 'only solution' and warned that using any other option, would result in leading the country towards destruction. The last may be hyperbole, but Pakistan People's Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari was also present with Ahsan Iqbal and said on the occasion that all the opposition parties were agreed that they did not accept the present 'selected prime minister' and would not accept any 'selected' prime minister in future either, be it through elections or an in-house change. In this regard the PPP has changed its mind and its stance, since in mid-September 2019 it decided to bring an in-house change by putting pressure on the government's allies and facilitators and even set a three-month deadline for the purpose. The fact is that the government enjoys a thin majority in the National Assembly and an in-house change would require as a first step the introduction by the opposition of a no-confidence motion against the PM and get it passed by a simple majority. But given the debacle of the no-confidence motion against the Speaker Senate, despite the opposition having a majority in the upper house, perhaps the PPP has had second thoughts on this course of action. However, what is intriguing about Shahbaz Sharif's resurrection of the idea of an in-house change is that it seems to be based on the perception that the removal of Imran Khan and his replacement even by another PTI heavyweight would be the first breach in the walls of the fortress constructed around him by his alleged facilitators and would lead to a rapid disintegration of the government's hold on power. Implicit in this scenario is the belief (or hope?) that Imran Khan's backers may be having second thoughts about their choice. So far, however, there is little sign of this wishful thinking coming true.