Will Bhuttos-Sharifs combination work for a while?

Will Bhuttos-Sharifs combination work for a while

By Raza Ruman

Will the combination  the Sharif-Bhuttos deliver? This is a million dollar question.

    Like PMLN Khurram Dastgir, PMLN is obsessed with it’s new narrative that Imran would have brought the army chief of his choice in November, Sharifs and Bhuttos would have buried in corruption cases and w Imran to remain in power till 2033.

     That justification was enough for Sharifs and Bhuttos to topple Khan with help of umpire and come to power.

      “To see off this catastrophe that hadn’t yet happened, Mian Nawaz Sharif ditched his vote-ko-izzat-do pompoms, and gave another elected government the old heave-ho. This wasn’t a software update as much as a return to factory settings: Mian Sahib is now the all-time gold medallist for helping elbow civilian prime ministers to the ground, at a grand tally of five; the leaderboard includes Sharifuddin (four) as well as Musharraf, Zia, and GIK (two each),” says Barrister Asad Rahim Khan.

 He further says key to this plot twist was the military establishment’s declaration of ‘neutrality’ — incidentally, the tabdeeli sarkar collapsed a month later. The dictionary defines neutrality as “an absence of strong feeling”, yet it’s hard not to think of the Saul Bellow novel Seize the Day, where our hero, failed actor Tommy Wilhelm, has to take responsibility for his actions. “A person either creates or he destroys,” Tommy is told. “There is no neutrality. Yet here we are: neutrality with a capital N. Bowing to the new mood are the royal houses of Raiwind and Larkana; arch-enemies in another life, their fusion dance makes up the Unity government today,” Asad says and adds in fairness, Unity’s entry also demands a postmortem of the PTI’s exit. Mr Khan’s supporters speak of a lonely leader that took on corrupt dyna­sts, foreign powe­­rs, the sugar cart­el’s vampires, and ultimately, the de­ep state — and paid for it. Less spoken of is the need to intros­pect: first, the PTI overlooked how critical parliament was to any ruling party’s protection; something Benazir, and Khawaja Tariq Rahim, sussed out well in 1989.

“Second, in a federation that refu­ses to break up its provinces, the battleground was always going to be Punjab; this was passed off to the shiftless Usman Buzdar. Third, cries of American intervention, while bagging populist points, hardly pointed to the major reasons for the PTI’s fall (those reasons remained as local as Rawalpindi’s and Islamabad’s). Fourth, this writer said in these pages that the Constitution had been plainly violated when the Assembly was dissolved; we now know this only sped up what it was meant to prevent. Fifth, burning bridges: when the establishment turned on the centre, as it inevitably would (and will again), the rest of the political class — shellacked by criminal cases — dove in to assist with the funeral rites.”

   Let’s see how long this Sharifs and Bhuttos go together? PAK DESTINY

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