He is now officially and literally not ‘fit’ to run the country considering he has chronic heart disease and just underwent a major surgery that requires a prolonged recovery period and complete isolation from stressful lifestyle, and as we know being a PM is the pinnacle of high pressured job.
So can a country like Pakistan afford to have a PM who is now officially told by doctors to not ‘worry’ about anything at all, including the country and lead a cosy cocooned up life in his palace?
What is the point of having a Prime Minister who is not even able to worry about your country?
Re: Is Nawaz Sharif fit enough to run the country?
Even a fully fit NS is not good to the run country and now he is unfortunately not fit
So he should better retire for the betterment of Pakistan
meanwhile his darbaris must be crying :(
Pakistan is a medieval European Kingdom - A King is a King even if he is on his death bed. No one is replacing him until he goes in his grave. Back in the days, you could get your head chopped off for high level treason for even suggesting that King should step down. That's why Europeans got rid of their powerful Kings and Queens and brought democracy!
Re: Is Nawaz Sharif fit enough to run the country?
Now if Pakistanis truly love their PM and know how to take care of a heart patient, they should literally make their country so great and perfect that their poor little Prime Minister never have to worry about it even for split second.
If there's ever a bad news in the country like people dying, mass unemployment, kids' starving, corruption etc etc....don't bother telling him, it'll cause stress.
Re: Is Nawaz Sharif fit enough to run the country?
Even though he is a wadera, but i am 50/50 that zardari would have nominated someone if he went for head surgery. It is just sharif lingo of centralizing power in their hands like some chaudhry (ironic for a city boy) and then things go awry.
Punjab is a given, but it doesn’t really mention what his actual approval rating is? 70+? karachi operation and improvement in balochistan could help his ratings.
Re: Is Nawaz Sharif fit enough to run the country?
If Asif Ali Zardari, who was diagnosed with a series of mental illnesses can become President of Islamic Republic of Pakistan, then why not Nawaz Sharif as the Prime Minister?
Re: Is Nawaz Sharif fit enough to run the country?
If Asif Ali Zardari, who was diagnosed with a series of mental illnesses can become President of Islamic Republic of Pakistan, then why not Nawaz Sharif as the Prime Minister?
His mental illness is permanent, gets worse if he does not do corruption on a daily basis.
Re: Is Nawaz Sharif fit enough to run the country?
For some reason I think you are talking about his mental fitness... I can't find him fit for leading a region in any capacity, he should run his 'lohay ka karkhana' if it is alive.
Re: Is Nawaz Sharif fit enough to run the country?
I agree with you if you promise to send back the IK on his original business ‘Play boy’ and if you think that he is now old for that sort of prostitution , still he can be a better supplier , as he has experience in Mush era ,
PTI put so much pressure on NS ont he issue of Panama leaks that poor NS had to run away to fake a heart surgery and you are saying PTI is out of equation
Re: Is Nawaz Sharif fit enough to run the country?
A very accurate analysis by Owen Bennett-Jones
Army controlling things and deciding crucial policies from behind the scenes is not good for democracy.
Indeed, civilian governance could be better but democratic maturity takes time to evolve. We need stability and continuity of electoral process and we need electoral reforms in order to strengthen our democratic culture.
A BRITISH politician, Enoch Powell, once remarked that all political careers end in failure. Richard Nixon may have reached the White House but later, as he looked back on his life, his reputation lay in ruins. Margaret Thatcher may have vanquished all her opponents but eventually they forced her out. Powell was right in part because the politicians’ promises are always so lavish they can never be kept.
Gen Musharraf was bound to fail the moment he promised to rid the country of corrupt politicians and to introduce ‘true’ democracy instead — whatever that is. He was vowing to accomplish more than he could deliver. And when, inevitably, he failed, the people wanted him to go. And even if Gen Musharraf has found it difficult to accept the popular verdict, the army learnt that those who hold power are held responsible for what happens.
Having taken that lesson on board, the post-Musharraf military adopted a new, subtler tactic. It decided to exercise power in all crucial areas while simultaneously allowing civilian rulers to hold office. Traditionally, the policy areas reserved for the army included the nuclear weapons programme and relations with the key foreign powers: India, Afghanistan and the United States. In the last few years, the list has expanded considerably. The establishment of apex committees, military courts and the military’s use of coercion to force the media onto the back foot means there is scarcely an area of public policy that the army is not seeking to influence or control.
You might think that it is an approach that has few downsides for the military. While they make the decisions, the civilians absorb the unpopularity that comes with the failure to deliver.
But there is a problem. The taste for power is insatiable. Its acquisition leads to the desire for more. It’s all a question of trends. The relationship between the civilians and the army is not static. Either the army is in the ascendant or the civilians are. It is not a stable situation in which the status quo can be sustained over a long period of time.
[HR][/HR]The taste for power is insatiable. Its acquisition leads to the desire for more.[HR][/HR]There are always so many reasons for the military to persuade itself that it needs more power. Take the media. From the army’s point of view, Pakistan’s journalists should produce articles that show the country in a good light. And they should never criticise the army.
Journalists who challenge authority and focus attention on difficult social issues are being negative and unpatriotic. And yet despite all the pressure from the army some writers persist in delivering ‘negative’ articles. And for some in the security establishment that is intolerable.
And then there are the corrupt politicians. As far as the army is concerned the old deal, whereby the politicians gave in to every military budget request and in return were allowed to fill their boots with loot, should no longer apply. The army wants to change the terms of that deal so that the politicians continue to give in to military demands but stop making the money.
Which brings us to Nawaz Sharif’s hospital bed in West London. Before the prime minister’s medical crisis the military’s calculation went like this: if Raheel Sharif does not get an extension then the gains made under his tenure might be lost. Without his personal authority to keep the government in check, it could be a case of back to business as usual with corrupt politicians providing weak, ineffective central government and the army’s power on a downward trend.
And the situation, as the army sees it, is urgent because over the next few months Raheel Sharif will inevitably became weaker. Whether it is President Obama, David Cameron or Gen Sharif, it is an iron rule of politics that outgoing leaders become lame ducks. Their power slips away the moment colleagues and rivals start looking ahead to what will happen after the leader has gone. And again, in the Pakistani context, that would set trends over the next few months that the army would find hard to tolerate.
It is possible that Nawaz Sharif’s medical difficulties could help calm the situation down. What more could the army ask for than a physically weakened prime minister? But there is another way of looking at it.
As each civilian government reaches its mid term the generals start casting around for a mechanism by which they can remove it. In the past the president would have been prevailed upon to force the prime minister out. With that option not available it has not been clear how the army should go about the business of removing Nawaz Sharif and putting someone more amenable in his place.
Until he became ill, that is. Because what easier argument could there be than it is inappropriate to have Pakistan governed from a sick bed? The writer is a British journalist and author of Pakistan: Eye of the Storm.
