CLINGING TO MEMORIES





If there is anything sadder than a person clinging to power, it is the sight of someone clinging to his memory of it. Both President Pervez Musharraf and his former Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz in their own separate ways are finding it as difficult as the British Prime Minister Tony Blair did in 2007 to quit and to let go, to ‘go gentle into that good night.’


One can understand their reluctance. For eight years they were an inseparable partnership, sharing both rewards and risks, exercising power and surviving assassination attempts to thwart it. Together, in October 1999 they claimed to have seen a vision, a new dawn for our country; eight years later, they are being made to witness the disappointing twilight of failed expectations.


It would be impossible to name two other persons throughout the history of Pakistan who have come to occupy the highest posts in the land without any pre-qualifications, who have then had the privilege of leading our country for so long, and who have been dipping so continuously into the reservoir of public goodwill. Today each of them sits by that receding pool, like some modern Narcissus, in love only with his own image.


For President Musharraf, history would appear to be repeating itself. Once before, early on in his 46 year long Army career, he was in danger of being dismissed from service. In 1965, he disobeyed the orders of his military superior and came within a whisker of being court-martialled. Thirty-five years later, in 1999, he refused to obey the orders of a civilian superior who approved his removal as Chief of Army Staff. Today, he refuses to heed the command of an electorate that in February’s general elections thought it had sent him marching orders, only to have them returned from his trenches. His predicament is unique: how does a president - however unpopular - give himself marching orders?


By comparison, Mr Shaukat Aziz’s departure from the two offices he held of Prime Minister and his own Finance Minister has been more dignified. His exit had been, as was his tenure in both posts, under the protective umbrella of Musharraf’s patronage. He could not have done better. Persons who enter politics from the side door need only one vote, not the crumpled mandate that falls out of a ballot box.


Not many people may be aware that long before 1999, Mr Aziz had circulated to any Pakistani government that would listen proposals for the rejuvenation of the country’s economy. He offered his services as part of a high powered team drawn from amongst his Citibank colleagues. In this, he was following a path trodden by such economic pundits as Syed Shahid Hussain, Moeen Qureshi, and Shahid Javed Burki, all of whom came from Washington D.C. with allopathic prescriptions to cure a backward country that craved homeopathic remedies.


Drawing on his experience as the head of Citibank’s Private Banking Division, Mr Aziz could see that his new client needed amongst other things to shore up its foreign currency deposits and to have its mountain of external debt levelled through rescheduling. Impervious to the blandishments of private temptations, Mr Aziz guarded the public treasury with the same care and rigorous discipline that he applied to his own private assets, some of which he was forced to disclose when he was nominated by Musharraf in 2004 to become Prime Minister. As he lacked a constituency of his own, he rode behind Musharraf on the PML - Q warhorse and remained beholden as much to Musharraf who held its reins as to the Chaudhrys from Gujrat who held the whip.


Persons who did not know Mr Aziz better expected that he would relinquish the Finance Ministership once he had been elected prime minister, just as some optimists had languished in the expectation that Musharraf would doff his uniform and surrender his post as Chief of the Army for the Presidency. Mr Aziz might have been taking his cue from his boss when he replied to one hopeful candidate for his Finance Ministership: ‘I cannot give you the only real job that I have.’


As Prime Minister, Mr Aziz ensured that his successes did not go unnoticed. A report prepared in 2005 by a subordinate in the Ministry of Finance, assessing his first year’s achievements as prime minister, lauds the country’s unprecedented GDP growth of 8.4%, per capita income of $700, the highest production of cotton (14.6 million bales), of wheat (21.6 million tons), privatisation proceeds of $2.6 billion, exit from IMF Programme, issuance of an Islamic Bond, and the introduction of the Fiscal Responsibility and Debt Limitation Law designed to control profligate governments from overspending.


Three years into office, the same ardent acolyte trumpeted that Mr Aziz’s ‘government has not only consolidated the economic recovery that began in early 2000 but also the economy of Pakistan continued to gain traction as it experienced the longest spell of its strongest growth in three years […..] Pakistan is in the midst of its strongest economic expansion phase and its growth momentum is broad-based. All the three major sectors, namely agriculture, industry and services and have provided support to strong economic growth.’


Why then, now that Mr Aziz has left the stage, is everything we were led to believe had taken place has disappeared, as if it was some sort of conjuring trick, an illusion? Why are the residual remains of his prime ministership not laurels but prickly brambles? Why did the Pakistan Supreme Court have to intervene in the Pakistan Steel Mills privatisation case? Why should there have been a wheat crisis when we had a comfortable surplus? Why should we be experiencing an energy crisis when four years ago, in 2005, a Cabinet Sub-Committee had been formed to devise a policy for the restructuring of the energy industry. Apart from Mr Aziz, it had six other cabinet ministers as members, assisted by advisors and experts from within the government and outside it. It is obvious they failed. What is less obvious is why many of them were allowed to continue at the national steering wheel.


Now that Mr Aziz is no longer in public office, like Mr Blair he finds time hangs heavily on his hands. He occupies himself with the innumerable interviews he gives to TV channels exonerating his performance as PM/FM, with the lecture-circuit, and by accepting consultancy assignments that must be less lucrative than those that went Dr Henry Kissinger’s way after his retirement. We are told that Mr Aziz may be writing his autobiography of his years as Musharraf’s civilian alter-ego. One hopes that he will be kinder to his mentor than he was to him in his autobiography In the Line of Fire. Out of seven references to Shaukat, Musharraf misspells his PM / FM’s name unconscionably as ‘Shuakat’ and ‘Shaukut’.