Nawaz Sharif, the three-time former prime minister and leader of the eponymous party Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), has returned to Pakistan. Sharif ended a four-year-long self-imposed exile in London and touched down in Islamabad before heading to his power base Lahore, where he addressed an impressive welcome rally the PML-N had organized. The decision by the man widely considered to be Pakistan’s most seasoned politician to come back at his juncture has raised many questions about the future of Pakistan’s politics, civil-military relations, and above all, Sharif’s own political legacy. This isn’t Sharif’s first comeback rodeo but might be his last. That Sharif, who turns 74 this Christmas, will return to Pakistan was never moot but under what conditions was the key question.
The PML-N supremo was flown to London for medical treatment in November 2019 after he was granted bail by the Islamabad High Court. He was serving a seven-year prison sentence for a flimsy charge of failing to disclose potential wages from a ceremonial position he had once held in his son’s UAE-based company. Before being sentenced, he had resigned as the PM when in 2017, the Supreme Court of Pakistan (SCP) disqualified him in a case triggered by the “Panama Papers” leaks, related to his family’s offshore holdings. Sharif has always maintained his innocence and accused the former Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa and the ex-director ISI General Faiz Hameed Chaudhry of orchestrating a coup against him and rigging the 2018 general elections to install Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party into power. The SCP did the army’s bidding to not just disqualify Sharif from the high office but also barred him from heading his own party. But Sharif continued to exercise de facto control over the PML-N while his younger brother Shehbaz Sharif served as the party’s titular president. After initial medical treatment in London, Sharif opted to stay there and bide his time but later launched a direct challenge to General Bajwa’s machinations. Sharif called for the country’s powerful army to stop political engineering and honor the people’s mandate: vote ko izzat do!
The crowd at Nawaz Sharif’s Lahore rally, October 21. Photo: X/@pmln_org
The Imran-Bajwa hybrid regime presided over a slump in economy and shoddy governance but plodded along till Imran Khan tried to retain General Faiz as the ISI chief, leading to a bitter tussle with General Bajwa that ended in the latter withdrawing army’s support to Khan. The opposition parties seized the chance, ousted Imran Khan through a no-confidence move, and installed Shehbaz Sharif as the PM leading a coalition government. Nawaz Sharif was reluctant at first to lend support to that process and wanted the failed Imran-Bajwa enterprise to implode but was convinced by his brother and other opposition leaders to bless it eventually. After Imran Khan’s ouster, Sharif wanted his brother to call fresh elections and capitalize on the former cricketer-turned-politician’s immense unpopularity at the time. But between Shehbaz Sharif and other coalition partners dithering and Imran Khan launching a relentless campaign against his former patrons in the army and the new government, that window of opportunity closed quickly. The coalition government abjectly failed to stymie a spiraling inflation, especially food and oil prices, and a rupee plunging against the US dollar that sapped the people’s purchasing power, making it highly unpopular. Sitting atop the coalition, Shehbaz Sharif squandered the PML-N’s political capital by the fistfuls and was petrified of elections. But with Imran Khan training his guns on the incumbent COAS General Asim Munir, the top brass and Shehbaz Sharif held each other in an ever tighter embrace. This nexus, however, deprived the PML-N of its anti-establishment credentials, which Nawaz Sharif had buttressed since his ouster. Bereft both of performance and a political plank, the PML-N dreaded to face a resurgent Imran Khan at the polls.
With his party’s approval taking a plunge and faced still with a myriad legal battles at home, Nawaz Sharif kept deferring his return. But after landing on the wrong side of the army establishment, Imran Khan faced his own legal problems, though the judiciary still gave him preferential treatment. All that, however, changed drastically when the protesting PTI leaders and cadres, most likely under instructions from Imran Khan himself, made the monumental blunder of attacking the army’s GHQ and other installations, when his arrest finally came about. Overnight, Imran Khan went from being a political martyr to a dead man walking. A furious brass cracked its whip, rounding up hundreds of PTI men and women. Imran Khan himself was rearrested and remains incarcerated. But that was not enough. The army under General Asim Munir put Imran Khan’s party on the chopping block to degrade its electoral capabilities. Defections and break away factions were induced and even a new party was carved out of the PTI. Instead of recapturing any ground from the army, the Shehbaz Sharif-led coalition abjectly abdicated the political and governance space to the junta. By giving constitutional and legal cover to the army’s business enterprises and unbridled internal security authority, the outgoing government paved the way for an Indonesian-style Dwifungsi or “dual function” military. But that still did not solve the popularity issue for the next general elections, as the economy continued to be measly.
The PML-N thus needed its leader back in the saddle. Nawaz Sharif, for his part, though not shy of facing the court and prison, insisted that the army should undo the injustices done to him by the judiciary at the previous junta’s behest. Left with no viable political alternatives, the army obliged. Nawaz Sharif and his family members finally got legal reprieve in one case after another. While the charges against Sharif were trumped-up and politically-motivated, the relief coming his way was also seen as a political rapprochement between the PML-N and the brass. But Nawaz Sharif continued to target General Bajwa and General Faiz for his 2017 ouster, both privately and publicly, which was a red flag for the current brass. It is widely perceived that Shehbaz Sharif was dispatched to London to plead with his elder brother to leave the former generals alone. The Islamabad High court subsequently granted Nawaz Sharif a protective bail. Stage was finally set for grand old man of Pakistani politics to return home. And when Nawaz Sharif finally delivered his homecoming speech to a very large and emotionally-charged crowd at the Minar-e-Pakistan, Lahore, he kept it circumspect. He alluded indirectly to the orchestrators of his ouster by asking who are the ones who keep coming between him and the people? Sharif made it a point to say that he had no wish for revenge, and that his only aim was to give relief to the people. He called for all institutions to work together. But hinting that he still can raise hell if pushed around, Nawaz Sharif recited a famous verse by Ghalib:
Ghālib hameñ nah chheṛ kih phir josh-e ashk se
baiṭhe haiñ ham tahīyah-e t̤ūfāñ kiye huʾe
(Ghalib, don’t tease/torment us, for again with/through a turmoil of tears
we are settled/brooding, having made provision/arrangement for a typhoon)
Nawaz Sharif with his family at the rally in Lahore, October 21. Photo: X/@pmln_org
Not known to be a man of many words, Nawaz Sharif does have a way to connect with his followers. And the primary thing he did from the podium was to engage and renew a bond with his devotees. He recalled his personal travails and hugged his daughter and political heir-apparent Maryam, who had struggled relentlessly on his behalf, on the stage. But Nawaz Sharif made economic recovery the centerpiece of his narrative reset by comparing the relative prosperity during his 2013-2017 era when Pakistan’s growth rate was 5.8% and inflation at around 4% with Imran Khan’s disastrous stint. Sharif invoked mega projects he had commissioned and completed over his previous terms and his reputation for growth and development.
He clearly attempted to put himself between the electorate and the Shehbaz Sharif government’s abysmal performance – its various constraints notwithstanding – during which the inflation had risen to 35% and Pakistan narrowly dodged the economic default bullet. While he bragged about making Pakistan a declared nuclear-weapons state, he also reiterated – without naming India – that there can be no progress while fighting the neighbors. It was indeed heartening to see Sharif, who is seen as close to the Israel-friendly Saudis and the UAE, wave a Palestinian flag on the stage at a time when many world leaders have shied away from raising their voice against the war in Gaza. For a first rally and speech after a four-year interregnum, Nawaz Sharif did achieve what he had set out to do: energize and mobilize his base, especially the Punjab. But the nostalgic broad strokes and reconciliatory notes can only be used a few times before they run out of their political efficacy.
Nawaz Sharif will have to tackle both the economic and political future of Pakistan and define and refine the roadmap, if he has any. There are no easy solutions out of the economic morass the country remains in despite a slightly better forecast from the IMF. The political rancor of the past 5 years continues to loom large. Sharif did not name Imran Khan even once in his speech, but it would be interesting to see how he addresses the issue of his archrival’s incarceration and potential elimination from the next elections. Despite an imprisoned Imran Khan desperately seeking a reconciliation with the army, the latter is unlikely to be forgiving anytime soon. An election held without Imran Khan, however, would be as tainted as the one that was held without Nawaz Sharif in 2018.
While the PML-N has fielded Nawaz Sharif effectively as its prime ministerial candidate, were it to prevail in the general elections, the legal status of his previous disqualification from the electoral process is still not completely clear. But all indications are that the army would not create any hurdles in his way. One speech is not much to go by, but it is unlikely that Nawaz Sharif will do the army’s bidding were he to return to power a fourth time. Opting for reticence and restraint vis-à-vis the former generals and judges appears to be a tactical move on Sharif’s part. With the army’s most recent encroachment over the political domain it is more likely than ever before that a PM Nawaz Sharif will eventually lock horns with an army chief, whether the incumbent or a successor. It is the nature of the principals, positions, and politics that define the interplay between the PMs and the army chiefs in Pakistan. Militaries are not trained to run complex states and the very nature of a constitutional democracy – even a weak one like Pakistan—puts the brass at loggerheads with the de jure chief executives.
The historical lesson is that even the weakest prime ministers like Muhammad Khan Junejo and Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali ended up having differences with the strongest army dictators, General Ziaul Haq and General Musharraf, respectively. Nawaz Sharif, on the other hand, is cut from a very different cloth. He had tried to assert his constitutional authority every single time he occupied the PM’s office in the past, though at his personal and political peril. And there is little reason to believe that it would be different this time around. What he does to avert an outcome like the previous ones would be interesting to see. The army, for its part, is aware of the conundrum and will likely use PTI’s breakaway factions and push other levers to keep in check Nawaz Sharif’s prospects at the polls and thereafter. With eyes on his political legacy, Nawaz Sharif has always wanted to go down in history as a statesman who decisively upended the army’s hegemony over politics and governance in Pakistan. But he has returned to Pakistan that has regressed to a full-blown praetorian state. Sharif surely has an uphill battle ahead.
Mohammad Taqi is a Pakistani-American columnist. He tweets @mazdaki.
