A year ago, when Nawaz Sharif turned up in parliament to take oath as Pakistan’s 27th prime minister, the mood perhaps was not as electric as in 2008 but there was a sense that another historical event was being witnessed.

On that day Sharif became the first elected leader who managed to claw his way back to the parliament after having been thrown out in a military coup. The other two premiers before him were not this lucky.

As he took oath, the sombre-looking Sharif was visibly burdened by the challenges he faced.

More than one observer conjectured that he realised the uphill task he faced to deliver on tangible issues such as electricity and the economy plus take forward the democratic project that the PPP had nurtured. A burden that had been thrown into sharp relief by the drubbing the PPP had gotten on election day due to its perceived lack of performance.

A short 12 months later it is perhaps too soon to judge a man who still has four years to prove himself. But one-year anniversaries — like first impressions — are marked, regardless of how unfair and incomplete a judgment they may provide. They provide a sense of the short journey undertaken so far.

And the steps he has taken since May last year reveal Sharif to be a man held hostage by his past, instead of one who has learnt from it.

From the unwillingness to let Musharraf go to the single-minded obsession with brick and mortar to an aversion to hard decisions, Sharif shows few signs of evolution.

This is not to say that he has learnt nothing.

Undoubtedly he has understood the importance of shunning the 90s habit of horse-trading. To his credit, he has held back party men and allies who are straining at the leash to destabilise the provincial governments in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.

There are also a few glimmers of maturity when confronted with criticism. On one of his occasional visits to the parliament, which had been preceded by scathing criticism of his absence, he remarked lightly that it appeared that he had been missed greatly.

But for the rest, Sharif remains a 90s child, who refuses, Peter Pan-like, to grow up.

He continues to run his own party and government like a small-time shopkeeper, who trusts no-one with the accounts, except a family member or two. Delegation is an alien concept.

The party members are kept at a distance — they can’t see the prime minister, he rarely holds party meetings and they can’t turn to him for help on their constituents’ problems.

Evidently, he has forgotten his last term when alienated party members left in droves in 1999.

Lording over hordes of MNAs and MPAs and very few political strongmen (more of them were there in the PML-N in the 90s in the shape of the Chaudhries, Mian Azhar and others), Sharif remains a politician who refuses to trust his own kind.

The elected members twiddle their thumbs on the backbenches while the prime minister hangs on to portfolios, relying on bureaucrats to run the affairs. If he does hand a ministry over, it is under duress. No wonder then that Khwaja Asif ended up representing the armed forces — like a shotgun marriage, this is a union that neither side is happy with.

If work is slowed down or key departments lack a political face then why worry. This is a family business and not a cabinet government where collective responsibility is the underlying principle.

Only the family is trusted — Dar has been given the cookie jar, to fill as he will, by borrowing and begging; Abid Sher Ali, the unguided missile, has been launched; and the elegant but unelected daughter (a well-run Twitter account is not a qualification) has been put in charge of the youth programme.

But the authoritarian roots do not simply reveal themselves in the running of party affairs.

He also refuses to engage with the opposition in the parliament. He may not be averse to driving over to visit Imran Khan or inviting former president Asif Ali Zardari to Islamabad for a meeting but the parliament, his raison d’être, is ignored.

Apart from the finance bill, the party has managed to carry out no legislative business because bills passed by the National Assembly have been blocked by the Senate where the PML-N does not have enough minions who can be ordered to vote yes.

And the aversion to politics and negotiations means that the ruling party made no effort to reach out to the PPP, till the PPO came along.

Even Sharif’s approach to development remains stuck in the past, when dictators and the third world were mentioned in the same breath.

Building roads, flyovers and other grandiose concrete projects are reminiscent of the times when authoritarian leaders thought legitimacy could be gained by laying foundation stones.

No wonder then when reports emerged that Sharif had said that he had envisioned the road connecting Islamabad to Pindi as one that resembled Dubai’s main thoroughfare with highrise buildings on either side, it sounded plausible.

The purported dream fit in with the development vision we associate with Sharif — not for him the larger agenda in which a government provides the environment in which business flourishes but a desperate rush to construct, turning a blind eye to missing ingredients such as security and investor-friendly environs in which courts do not question business deals.

Sharif presumes that if he builds roads and buildings, investors, residents and travellers will come.

The larger vision continues to be MIA.

Take the energy policy, unveiled with great fanfare last summer. It set few goals, making it difficult to judge progress. No concrete efforts have been taken to deal with the circular debt (its latest figures were hard to find in the Economic Survey released on Monday). Few know what has been done to plug the leaks and how to get the unpaid bills paid — but there have been plenty of trips to new power projects.

The lack of clarity is present elsewhere too — it’s still not clear if PIA will be privatised or revived. And it seems as if the policy on terrorism is to harp on about talks while airstrikes are carried out. Tax reforms are still a distant dream.

This indecision is now evident in the Geo-ISI fight where all channels, including Geo at times, are blaming the government.

In fact, the eruption of the internecine media war also highlights the fact that Sharif has not been able to  discard the authoritarian DNA he inherited at the time he joined politics. Used to co-opting journalists, this time around also, he tried to win over media men by offering them access and positions. But he focused on just one group — ensuring that now the others have trained their guns on the government as well as Geo.

Yet, as it was mentioned earlier, one-year anniversaries and first impressions are but transitory. There is more than enough time to leave a lasting legacy. For that, however, Sharif will have to become a politician who knows how to share power and build consensus. And in order to do so, he will have to let go of old habits and embrace the changing world that he now rules in.

Published in Dawn, June 5th, 2014