PML-N President Shahbaz Sharif Sunday categorically rejected speculation that he was about to resign from the party’s presidency, describing it as “fake news”. A report earlier in Jang had stated that the former Punjab chief minister was unhappy over the party’s dismal performance in the recently-concluded Azad Jammu and Kashmir elections after his election strategy was allegedly ignored by the party leadership. Shahbaz Sharif rejected speculation as well that he had been sidelined, adding that “the PML-N is like our house, and Nawaz Sharif, every party leader, worker and women [leaders] over the past 40 years have played their role in building it”. The former Punjab chief minister said he was offered the prime ministership twice over the last couple of decades, adding that one of these offers was made by former president Ghulam Ishaq Khan and later, by military dictator General (retd) Pervaiz Musharraf.
Shahbaz Sharif has, as expected, rubbished rumours that he was angry enough at his narrative in the AJK election campaign being ignored by the party leadership to threaten to resign as president. But even this denial cannot brush the fact that there are very visible cleavages in the party hierarchy under the carpet. For it is clear as daylight that the party’s supreme leader and former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, and heir apparent Maram Nawaz on the one hand, and PML-N President Shahbaz Sharif on the other have been pulling the central party narrative towards opposite extremes at least since the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) first tried to unseat Prime Minister Imran Khan last fall, if not before.
And it’s been a while since these differences spilled out in the open and all over the national press. Now the second tier leadership of the party – which comprises very senior politicians who have been ministers many times over, and once even prime minister – is often left dumfounded on talk shows on prime time TV when asked about the direction that the party really intends to take all the way to the next general election. Clearly you can’t have one arm of the party egging everybody on for a very direct confrontation with the so-called establishment and the other calling for national reconciliation and also expect voters to be of one mind when they cast their votes.
It is a fact that the party has two echelons of decision-making, and the contest is between Maryam Nawaz and Shehbaz Sharif, who is also the Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly. Apparently under pressure from a plethora of alleged corruption cases, the PML-N has not been able to sustain a single pace and a vociferous narrative in terms of national and international policies. Plus, its ‘select-few’ passion for Army-bashing has cost it dear. Maryam and her coterie are primarily accused of toeing such an unwise approach; and the good point is that senior party stalwarts have taken exception to it. This brinkmanship is proving to be suicidal.
Reports of Shehbaz Sharif crossing swords with his patron and elder brother, Nawaz Sharif, are not a good omen. They need a thorough in-house dialogue before making it a public manifesto. There is no dearth of prudent people in the PML-N, and it is time for them to rise above partisan politics and evolve a pro-national narrative. No point in being cast as a pariah.
Shafaqna Pakistan
pakistan.shafaqna.com
