Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif has resigned following an order of the Supreme Court that found him 'not honest' and therefore not fit to hold the high office. This is the third time Nawaz Sharif is stepping down as prime minister before the end of his term.
The first term, starting in 1990, ended when he was dismissed by the president in 1993 owing to allegations of corruption. The great survivor that he is Nawaz Sharif came back in 1997, but was overthrown by the then army chief, Pervez Musharraf, in 1999. The prime minister had refused permission for the aircraft bearing Musharraf from Colombo. Obviously, it was an unwise move to deny landing permission to an aircraft. Sharif was tried and sentenced to 14 years, but after six months, he was allowed to go to Saudi Arabia. This shows the clout of Saudi Arabia in Pakistan. Sharif came back from exile and won the election in 2013. He should have continued till the next election due in April 2018.
There is something intriguing about the court verdict. On July 10, two justices of the five-member bench had given their verdict unfavorable to Nawaz. The final verdict was reserved and this case was not listed in the court for the next two weeks. However, the verdict on Friday came as a surprise. There is speculation that the Pakistan army might have influenced the court.
The fall of Nawaz Sharif illustrates the power of investigative journalism. In 2016, the International Consortium of Journalists had got hold of 11.5 million documents of a company called Mossack Fonseka based in Panama. The company facilitated money laundering and tax evasion. The leaked documents were dubbed Panama papers. They showed that Maryam Sharif, the daughter of the prime minister, was involved in raising a mortgage with some flats in London as collateral. The main issue was the source of funds. The Sharif family refused to cooperate in tracing the money trail. It was found that some documents produced by Maryam had been typed using the Calibri font of Microsoft much before the font was introduced. This shows that the documents were forged.
We do not know what might happen next. But, it is reasonably clear that a person chosen by Nawaz Sharif will be chosen by his party PML-N which has 209 seats in a house of 342. Nawaz Sharif had been grooming his daughter Maryam to succeed him. That will have to wait at least for a while. For Imran Khan, the cricketer-turned-politician, this is a big victory. But we do not know whether he will be able encash this verdict in the general election, especially in Punjab, the most populous and prosperous province where Nawaz Sharif is popular. We do not even know whether this marks the end of the political career of Sharif though it is difficult to see how he can comeback.
What will be the implications for Indo-Pak relations? The main grouse of the army against Nawaz Sharif was that he was soft on India. The army made sure that the Modi-Sharif duo could not improve the bilateral relations. Hence, the new prime minister whosoever he or she is will think twice before displeasing the army. But, given the political turmoil and the proximity of election in April 2018 or about that time, we cannot realistically expect any improvement in our relations with our neighbor in the west. There might be more violations of the line of control and Pakistan might coordinate such violations with China unless the border face-off with China is ended.