Who Owns Pakistan - Yimg

invisible supporters and mentors? What was his real strength? Was it his
economic power or his avowed opposition to Benazir Bhutto?
These were some of the questions in my mind as I watched Nawaz Sharif take
oath that day. I am sure similar questions must have crossed minds of others
who were watching the cermony on Pakistan Television.
In his book " A study in the power of money today in USA", Ferdinand Lindberg
says that it is in the very nature of power to exert itself and thus it were the
owners of wealth who were making or frustrating public politics in the United
States. Was Nawaz Sharif also a case of money exerting itself to make or
unmark public policies in Pakistan? I asked myself.
It is said that some people are born great, some achieve greatness and
some have greatness thrust upon them. The Pakistani politics abounds in
people who had greatness thrusted upon them, by establishment or "agencies"
which are said to be ruling Pakistan. Was Nawaz Sharif another case of
greatness being thrust upon him or was he being thrusted upon the people of
Pakistan? I asked.
It were these questions storming my mind as I sat in the Darbar Hall of
Presidancy that gave birth to the idea of this book. I promised myself to study
Nawaz Sharif's style, politics and economic policies. It was not meant to be
something personal, an inquiry into the value and assests of a man who had
risen to be Prime Minister of Pakistan. It was to be the study of a phenomenon,
an inquiry into wealth of of the 22 families and the process by which they acquire
and accumulate wealth and power.
If Nawaz Sharif was not a case of wealth exerting itself then how to explain the
entry and rise of an industarialist in the portals of power?
Technically this study should have taken five years but I had a premonition that if
I was planing the study of the tenure of new Prime Minister then I would have far
less than the five years of stipulated term. The premonition was strengthened
when immediately after the oath taking ceremony, my friend Ghulam Hussain of
the Urdu language periodical "Sayassi Log" invited me and Anwar Mansuri of
German Press Agency DPA to his room in Islamabad Hotel and predicted over a
cup of tea that Nawaz Sharif would not last more than a year.
His prediction would have come true but like his opponents, Nawaz Sharif's
mentors also underestimated the strength and resilience of their protege. Many
people, including his opponents fail to realise that like Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's legacy,
Nawaz Sharif is and will always remain a force to reckon within Pakistani politics,
because he was reaction to Bhutto's politics. And according to Newton's third law
of force reaction is always equally strong, in the opposite direction.
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