NAWAZ Sharif wants to have his cake and eat it too.
He wants to have his party’s government in power and yet behave as if he is in the opposition. He wants to talk about strengthening institutions and democracy while relentlessly attacking the very institutions of democracy. This must stop.
The speech Mr Sharif gave to an audience of lawyers on Friday was unwise and unacceptable. It is clear that the Supreme Court judgement which ousted Mr Sharif from the prime ministership is flawed and controversial.
Mr Sharif is rightly aggrieved and some of the questions he raised on Friday are pertinent to his family’s continuing legal difficulties. A superior court judge monitoring a trial court’s proceedings against a defendant who the superior court has already declared to be unfit to hold public office appears to violate the principles of justice and due process.
Yet, Mr Sharif’s broadsides against the judiciary and dark allusions to threats against the democratic order are counterproductive.
Beyond the venting of personal grievances in public, it is not clear that the former prime minister has a strategy to strengthen the democratic order. A month since his ouster, the most Mr Sharif and his inner circle have been able to suggest is the need for a constitutional amendment to the qualification and disqualification criteria of parliamentarians.
While clarity is needed on the matter, the PML-N’s motives hardly appear to be altruistic. Indeed, the suggestion that a constitutional amendment be applied retrospectively to allow Mr Sharif to once again participate in electoral politics indicates that the PML-N continues to misjudge the national mood and is willing to deepen the political crisis simply to save its own leader.
A person-specific constitutional amendment would be the very antithesis of democracy, as were earlier stipulations barring Mr Sharif and Benazir Bhutto from becoming prime minister again.
There is an obvious path that the PML-N could take that would be democratic and help dispel the air of crisis: a snap election. Dissolve parliament and go to the voter for a fresh mandate with a manifesto outlining the constitutional, legislative and institutional changes that the PML-N intends to bring in order to deepen democracy in the country.
Admittedly, with detailed census results yet to be released and an important electoral reforms package still to become law, a snap election under current rules and with existing constituencies would not be ideal, but at least the vote would be a referendum of sorts on the PML-N and its plans for the democratic order. Another path, one that the Supreme Court itself may want to consider, is to convene the full court for a review of the judgement against Mr Sharif.
While there may be technical objections to such a move, surely the voice of the full court should be heard in the matter. What is clear is that the current situation is unsustainable. Mr Sharif and his PML-N cannot talk like they are in the opposition while running the government and the superior judiciary cannot ignore the genuine legal concerns that have been raised.
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