Nawaz Sharif

Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif

Mian Mohammad Nawaz Sharif (Urdu: میاں محمد نواز شریف ) was born on December 25, 1949 in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan. Nawaz Sharif was twice elected as Prime Minister of Pakistan, serving two non-consecutive terms. His first term was from November 1, 1990 to July 18, 1993, and his second term was from February 17, 1997 to October 12, 1999. His party is the Pakistan Muslim League N (Nawaz group). His rule came to an abrupt end following the overthrow of his government by the General Pervez Musharraf-led military coup in 1999 months after the Kargil War.

Early years

Sharif was born in Lahore, to a well-to-do Punjabi family,the son of Mian Mohammad Sharif, then the owner of a relatively modest cast-iron parts business who later became a prominent industrialist and later a joint owner of the Ittefaq Group of Industries. Nawaz Sharif became politically prominent after General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq declared martial law over Pakistan in 1977. Sharif served as finance minister of the province of the Punjab under the dispensation of General Zia, and was later the provincial (Punjab) chief minister. Although the military government is credited with his political debut, and being Punjabi, Sharif became an important figure in Pakistani politics when elected government was restored in 1988 after General Zia's death, gaining a significant electoral constituency in his hometown Lahore that he has managed to retain.

Former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif

Premiership

He first became Prime Minister on November 1, 1990, running on a platform of conservative government and an end to corruption. His term was interrupted on April 18, 1993, when President Ghulam Ishaq Khan used his Powers conffered upon him by the Eighth Amendment powers to dissolve the Assemblies. Less than six weeks later, the Supreme Court overruled the President, restoring the Assemblies and returning Sharif to power on May 26, 1993. Sharif resigned alongwith President Ghulam Ishaq Khan from office on July 18, 1993 after his feud with the president who accused him of corruption. Moin Qureshi became caretaker prime minister, and was succeeded shortly thereafter by Benazir Bhutto, who was elected to office on October 19, 1993.

Nawaz was returned to power in February 1997 with such a huge majority that the result was immediately questioned by Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party.

One of the first things Sharif did at the start of his second term was to orchestrate the scrapping of Article 58-(2)(b) through another Amendment to the Constitution - an exercise in which Sharif's party was joined by all the other political parties in the National Assembly and Senate. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan was passed so that the President could no longer dismiss the Prime Minister; and the Fourteenth Amendment imposed so-called party discipline on members of Parliament. Party leaders now had unlimited power to dismiss any of their legislators if they failed to vote as they were told. This made it impossible to dismiss a prime minister by a motion of no confidence. In effect, the two amendments removed nearly all checks on the Prime Minister's power, since they removed all legal remedies to dismiss him. He opposed the independence of the judiciary, clashing with the Chief Justice, Sajjad Ali Shah. The Supreme Court was stormed by Sharif's party loyalists on November 28, 1997, and the Chief Justice was forced to resign.

On the development front, Nawaz Sharif completed the construction of South West Asia's first motorway, the 433km M2, linking Lahore and Islamabad. The motorway, which was initiated during Nawaz Sharif's first term, was inaugurated in November 1997 and was constructed at a cost of Rs35.5 billion.

The peak of his popularity came when his government undertook nuclear tests on 28 May 1998 in response to India's nuclear tests two weeks earlier. However after these tests, matter started going downhill. He suspended many civil liberties, dismissed the Sindh provincial government and set up military courts when the stability of the government was threatened. He was accused of cronyism and being too supportive of Punjabi candidates for office, which marginalized his party in the south.

During his first term as prime minister, Sharif had fallen out with three successive army chiefs: with General Mirza Aslam Beg over the 1991 Gulf War issue; with General Asif Nawaz over the Sindh "Operation Clean-Up" issue; and with General Waheed Kakar over the Sharif-Ishaq imbroglio.

At the end of General Waheed's three-year term in January 1996, General Jehangir Karamat was appointed army chief. His term was due to end on January 9, 1999. In October 1998, however, true to form, Sharif fell out with General Karamat as well, over the latter's advocacy of the need for the creation of a National Security Council.

In October 1998 General Karamat resigned and Sharif appointed General Pervez Musharraf as army chief (the first person to become army chief from the minority group of Urdu speaking people).

Charged and Convicted

Nawaz Sharif has been convicted of tax evasion, corruption, hijacking and terrorism. The Accountability Court has disqualified him from holding any public office for 21 years and fined him 20 million rupees. He was to serve 14 years for tax evasion and two concurrent life terms for the terrorism and hijacking escaping the death penalty. Instead of serving this sentence Nawaz was sent into exile.

Kargil Conflict and aftermath

Nawaz was already very unpopular, but his popularity dropped even further when it was discovered that Pakistani troops were involved in what came to be known in 1999 as Kargil War. This was at a time when he was working for peace with the Indian government. It was an international embarrassment and he came under American pressure to withdraw his troops. After he ordered the withdrawal of forces from the Kargil area, Sharif became more unpopular. (Information gleaned later showed that Musharraf was instrumental in planning the Kargil fiasco and in the ultimate withdrawal.) Growing fiscal deficits and debt-service payments mainly due to American sanctions led to a financial crisis. The government narrowly avoided defaulting on its international loans. With the country suffering from frequent power blackouts, Sharif directed the army in early 1999 to take control of the Water And Power Development Authority (WAPDA) of Pakistan.

Military Coup

With the public and press openly speculating about the possibility of a military takeover, Nawaz became increasingly insecure. On October 12, 1999, he removed Musharraf as army chief. Musharraf, who was out of the country, boarded a commercial airliner to return to Pakistan. Sharif ordered the Karachi airport to prevent the landing of the airliner, which then circled the skies over Karachi. The army ousted Sharif's administration and took over the airport. The plane landed with only a few minutes of fuel to spare, and Musharraf assumed control of the government.

Nawaz was thrown in prison and tried by Pakistan's Anti-Terrorism Courts, which sentenced him to several life sentences for corruption, hijacking, tax evasion, embezzlement, and terrorism in 2000. The military government agreed to commute his sentence from life in prison to exile in Saudi Arabia. His family moved with him. His wife and senior members of his party formed an anti-military coalition along with the Pakistan People's Party, previously the major opposition to Sharif's Muslim League. Nawaz and the PPP have only offered token resistance to President Musharraf's government. Efforts are mainly restricted to criticism through the media and trying to disrupt Parliament. Nawaz and his supporters have been unable to launch a broadly anti-government movement.

Recent events

Musharraf on May 11, 2005 declared that exiled political leaders, including Bhutto and Nawaz, would not be allowed to come back or participate in the general elections scheduled for 2007. Nawaz had been battling to obtain a Pakistani passport. Recently he was able to obtain a temporary passport allowing him limited travel to the United Kingdom where his son was hospitalized in serious condition.A pact was signed between former prime ministers Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto in London on May 14. Whether this pact will pressure the current Government in Pakistan remains to be seen as both Bhutto and Sharif are viewed as corrupt and incompetent by many Pakistanis and their anti-government campaigns have been failures.

Trivia

* Nawaz was a cricketer and played a first class game in the 1973-74 season representing Pakistan Railways.
*In his recent appearances on the media, Nawaz has been seen with much more hair than he used to have (he was almost bald) prompting most people to think that he has undergone a hair implantation procedure like his brother Shahbaz Sharif..

External links

*BBC Profile of Nawaz Sharif
*Government of Pakistan website
*Pakistan Muslim League FRANCE website
*Pakistan Muslim League Pakistan website
*The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan
*Chronicles Of Pakistan
*Nawaz Convicted

Nawaz Sharif: Encyclopedia BETA

Contents