Is the pot calling the kettle black?

In his career Nawaz Sharif has fought with three civilian presidents (Ghulam Ishaq Khan, Farooq Leghari, and now Asif Zardari), five army chiefs (General Aslam Beg, General Asif Nawaz, General Abdul Waheed Kakar, General Jehangir Karamat and General Pervez Musharraf) and two Chief Justices (Justice Sajjad Ali Shah and now Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar). In doing so he has played to the gallery in urban Punjab with the help of a powerful media machine that does not discuss his shortcomings but helps him cultivate the image of a strong man who does not budge from his stance. In each case, once he had accomplished his immediate objective Nawaz Sharif always compromised to the detriment of civil society. The country always plunged into a new crisis each time Mr Sharif pursued the politics of confrontation. In the 1990s, Mr Sharif’s “strategy” gave us unstable civilian governments and the consequent rise of the Taliban, culminating in the military dictatorship of General Pervez Musharraf. One wonders what Mr Sharif’s latest round of street politics will bring to the country.

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When the no-confidence vote and horse-trading could not bring down the PPP government and install Nawaz Sharif, his invisible supporters sought another route for power for Nawaz Sharif. Naseerullah Babar disclosed in the National Assembly in 1994 how the politicized ISI had disbursed funds to purchase the loyalty of politicians and public figures so as to manipulate the 1990 elections, helping the IJI formed by General Hamid Gul to bring the defeat of the PPP. Even the Supreme Court headed by Chaudhry Iftikhar never heard and decided the petition by Air Marshal Asghar Khan on the subject.

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Check Baithak's The Deafening Silence of the Roaring Supreme Court