A passage to Pakistan with media in tow

Hasan Suroor
The Hindu, 8 September

The excitement generated in Britain over Nawaz Sharif’s return is extraordinary.

When the former Pakistani Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, returns to Islamabad on Monday (“Inshallah,” as he put it, making allowances for any last-minute hitch), he will be accompanied by a planeload of London-based foreign journalists, presumably to make sure that any attempt by the Musharraf Government to humiliate him is instantly flashed around the world.

That, at least, is the plan but its success, of course, will depend on whether the journalists he wants to take with him are given visas by the Pakistan High Commission in London. He has certainly put the Pakistan Government in a dilemma and there will be people in the High Commission who will be saying: damned, if we do, and damned if we don’t.

For, allowing reporters to go with Mr. Sharif would seem like helping him with his media campaign to oust President Pervez Musharraf while barring them would be seen as an act of political vindictiveness and, more seriously, invite accusations of gagging the media. Either way Mr. Sharif is assured of headlines. His office here denies that there is an agenda in “inviting” the media to accompany him to Pakistan. It claims that Mr. Sharif is simply responding to a “high volume of requests” from journalists.

While Mr. Sharif’s camp is raring to go, there are no firm indications yet about the travel plans of Benazir Bhutto, the other former Pakistani Premier cooling her heels here. But apparently back in her native Larkana they are already sprucing up her family home and dusting off the red carpet to give her a heroine’s welcome. “Village prepares for Bhutto to return in triumph,” reported The Daily Telegraph quoting a breathless party activist as saying: “ We cannot wait.”

The Sharif-Bhutto campaign has caused an extraordinary degree of media excitement in Britain. Subcontinental politics rarely gets the kind of play in the British press that the activities of these two leaders have got in recent weeks with every twist and turn being reported in detail. A lot of it, of course, has to do with the silly season in domestic politics because of the long summer holidays. With newspapers struggling to fill pages and television executives wrestling with hours and hours of idle air-time the saga of two fallen Asian leaders railing against an “evil” military dictator and vowing to restore democracy in their “beloved” homeland has come as a god-send. And, Pakistani politicians are loving it.

Suddenly, even the second and third strings in the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League (N), who wouldn’t normally get a look-in, find themselves in great demand. Their phones are constantly busy and callers wishing to leave a message are told that they can’t — because their voice-mail inboxes are “full.” Ms. Bhutto and Mr. Sharif may not yet be household names in Britain but, certainly, their faces have started to ring a bell as their pictures stare out of newspapers and flash on television screens.

The transformation of Mr. Sharif, who was virtually a nobody in Britain compared to the better-known Ms. Bhutto, has been striking. Guess where he held the press conference to announce the date of his return to Pakistan? At the Dorchester — one of London’s most classy hotels associated more with celebrities than out-of-power politicians from the third world.

Virtuoso perfomance

Mr. Sharif, in his smart black suit and surrounded by important-looking aides glued to their mobile phones, belied the image of an opposition leader struggling to regain power. And, when he spoke — hopping from Urdu to English and back to Urdu — he sounded every bit as prime ministerial as he used to when he was actually one. Veteran Pakistan watchers rated it as ``Mian” Nawaz Sharif’s best performance on British soil.

The same evening he was on TV predicting the end of President Musharraf’s “corrupt rule” and sniping at Ms. Bhutto for attempting to do a deal with a dictator.

And, then, he popped up in The Times under the heading “The man out to oust a President.” A large photograph of Mr. Sharif looking into a mirror and arranging his tie was splashed across the page. He claimed that he was not alone in his struggle for democracy.

“The entire nation is with me,” he said repeating the script that by now has become familiar to anyone who has been following his statements. There was one poignant moment, though, when he sounded more homesick than hungry for power. Speaking about his plans to travel to his native city Lahore by road, he said the prospect “tugs at the wires of my heart.”

In Urdu it would have sounded a lot more poetic. But, alas, he was speaking to The Times. But then home sounds sweet in any language. So, on to Lahore …via Islamabad with a planeload of Western journalists.