Imran Khan versus Nawaz Sharif: two parties’ game of political death
Once, during an informal meeting with Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal, I asked him why the ruling party Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz’s central executive committee hadn’t yet endorsed Chief Minister Punjab Shahbaz Sharif as the party’s next prime ministerial candidate. He didn’t answer me directly but just said: “Nawaz Sharif takes care of the politics, provides an umbrella, as it were, so that Shahbaz Sharif can deliver the projects and development work.”
In other words, that final confirmation by the party’s apex decision-making body is a political decision, to be deferred until the judgments in the corruption cases against Nawaz Sharif and his family. If Nawaz and his daughter Maryam are jailed, Shahbaz and his son Hamza are there to lead the charge.
The Sharif tag team was out in full force last week in Lodhran to celebrate the victory of the PMLN’s Iqbal Shah in a by-election.
On the stage were PMLN’s past, present and future, and all the possible combinations of leadership: Nawaz Sharif, Shahbaz Sharif, Maryam Nawaz and Hamza Shahbaz. A triumphant Nawaz Sharif reiterated his pet line, “It’s not the umpire’s finger, but the thumbs of the masses that take decisions.” The umpire’s finger is a reference to arch-rival Imran Khan’s statement from four years ago that the umpire’s finger has been raised and Nawaz Sharif and his government will be ousted, widely understood as a reference to the army despite Khan’s protestations to the contrary. The thumbs are the thumb-prints of the voters on ballot boxes.
The Lodhran by-poll is a triumph sweetened twice. First, it is the last by-election before the forthcoming general elections, widely seen as a bellwether. Second, the PMLN candidate overcame Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) Ali Tareen, son of Jehangir Tareen, Khan’s second-in-command, who was, like Sharif, disqualified from contesting elections by the Supreme Court. Jehangir Tareen had won the Lodhran seat in 2015.
Since the 2013 elections, the PMLN and PTI have been locked in a game of political death through protests, the courts, fresh political recruitments, even seat by seat in subsequent by-polls.
Four years ago, when Imran Khan was leading a sit-in outside parliament against electoral fraud, his cry of “Go Nawaz Go” became the song, the ringtone and slogan of choice for graffiti inscriptions across urban Pakistan. Khan and the PTI say the mantra symbolizes the end of corruption, nepotism, and dynastic politics in the country. But without follow-up, a slogan is stripped of meaning. In the four years since Imran Khan popularized it, with Nawaz gone as prime minister, the slogan proved to be just the battle-cry for PMLN’s beheading.
Only Nawaz is not gone, and his political narrative — if we cynically set aside his personal effort to survive and keep himself and his family in power — has more resonance. This is because it seemingly empowers the voter. When Maryam Nawaz addressed a social media team convention in Mansehra, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, last week, she said: “The court of the people exonerated Nawaz Sharif. One after the other, the people’s court gave its verdict, as it did in Lodhran.”
In other words, that final confirmation by the party’s apex decision-making body is a political decision, to be deferred until the judgments in the corruption cases against Nawaz Sharif and his family. If Nawaz and his daughter Maryam are jailed, Shahbaz and his son Hamza are there to lead the charge.
The Sharif tag team was out in full force last week in Lodhran to celebrate the victory of the PMLN’s Iqbal Shah in a by-election.
On the stage were PMLN’s past, present and future, and all the possible combinations of leadership: Nawaz Sharif, Shahbaz Sharif, Maryam Nawaz and Hamza Shahbaz. A triumphant Nawaz Sharif reiterated his pet line, “It’s not the umpire’s finger, but the thumbs of the masses that take decisions.” The umpire’s finger is a reference to arch-rival Imran Khan’s statement from four years ago that the umpire’s finger has been raised and Nawaz Sharif and his government will be ousted, widely understood as a reference to the army despite Khan’s protestations to the contrary. The thumbs are the thumb-prints of the voters on ballot boxes.
The Lodhran by-poll is a triumph sweetened twice. First, it is the last by-election before the forthcoming general elections, widely seen as a bellwether. Second, the PMLN candidate overcame Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) Ali Tareen, son of Jehangir Tareen, Khan’s second-in-command, who was, like Sharif, disqualified from contesting elections by the Supreme Court. Jehangir Tareen had won the Lodhran seat in 2015.
Since the 2013 elections, the PMLN and PTI have been locked in a game of political death through protests, the courts, fresh political recruitments, even seat by seat in subsequent by-polls.
Four years ago, when Imran Khan was leading a sit-in outside parliament against electoral fraud, his cry of “Go Nawaz Go” became the song, the ringtone and slogan of choice for graffiti inscriptions across urban Pakistan. Khan and the PTI say the mantra symbolizes the end of corruption, nepotism, and dynastic politics in the country. But without follow-up, a slogan is stripped of meaning. In the four years since Imran Khan popularized it, with Nawaz gone as prime minister, the slogan proved to be just the battle-cry for PMLN’s beheading.
Only Nawaz is not gone, and his political narrative — if we cynically set aside his personal effort to survive and keep himself and his family in power — has more resonance. This is because it seemingly empowers the voter. When Maryam Nawaz addressed a social media team convention in Mansehra, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, last week, she said: “The court of the people exonerated Nawaz Sharif. One after the other, the people’s court gave its verdict, as it did in Lodhran.”
Whether it’s corruption or election fraud, action has fallen short of the rhetoric.Amber Rahim Shamsi
The PMLN is running with the idea that the vote is sacred, and it is the people who decide who leads them, not the machinations of the military establishment or the judgments of judges who endorsed military dictatorships. Given Pakistan’s history of shaky democratic governments undercut by the unelected, Nawaz’s narrative cuts to the heart of a democracy.
The slogan encapsulating this narrative is “Mujhey Kyun Nikala?” or “Why was I unseated?” and Nawaz Sharif is fond of listing his development work and conspiracies as reasons. It is an open-ended question, meme-worthy, answered according to whichever way your politics lean.
It doesn’t matter if Nawaz Sharif’s own political history belies the sanctity of the vote, or that in a robust democracy a politician can and should be investigated for corruption and tried by independent courts, or that Nawaz was once bedfellow with the judges and military establishment that he now claims to flout.
In politics, what matters is being able to sell the lemonade, once life hands out the lemons, as a health drink.
Ultimately, Nawaz Sharif and the PMLN have what Imran Khan and the PTI do not — experience. The party has survived a military ouster, abandonment by the ranks, exile, and the rough and tumble of forty years in Pakistan’s dysfunctional democratic system. In the post-Panama scenario, it has shown that it understands constituency-level politics, and has successfully taped over internal fractures and fended off external threats. Nawaz and Maryam together manage the politics and media messaging, Shahbaz Sharif is the prime minister-in-waiting with a reputation as a doer, while in-fighting isn’t allowed to create hurdles to the goal of winning elections.
Imran Khan and the PTI emerged as strong contenders in 2013 on the wave of idealism. But as Imran Khan pursued Nawaz relentlessly, his party came to look like the status quo it claimed to combat. The rivalry between two key lieutenants is undercutting electoral victories. Meanwhile, it is hard to see a successor to Imran’s leadership. More importantly, whether it’s corruption or election fraud, action has fallen far short of the rhetoric.
If politics is like a game of poker, and the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz got dealt with a high card only to win the round, it is because Imran Khan folded with a flush.
• Amber Rahim Shamsi is an award-winning multimedia journalist who hosts the Newswise news and current affairs show on Dawn News. She has worked with the BBC World Service as a bilingual reporter, presenter and producer. Twitter: @AmberRShamsi
The slogan encapsulating this narrative is “Mujhey Kyun Nikala?” or “Why was I unseated?” and Nawaz Sharif is fond of listing his development work and conspiracies as reasons. It is an open-ended question, meme-worthy, answered according to whichever way your politics lean.
It doesn’t matter if Nawaz Sharif’s own political history belies the sanctity of the vote, or that in a robust democracy a politician can and should be investigated for corruption and tried by independent courts, or that Nawaz was once bedfellow with the judges and military establishment that he now claims to flout.
In politics, what matters is being able to sell the lemonade, once life hands out the lemons, as a health drink.
Ultimately, Nawaz Sharif and the PMLN have what Imran Khan and the PTI do not — experience. The party has survived a military ouster, abandonment by the ranks, exile, and the rough and tumble of forty years in Pakistan’s dysfunctional democratic system. In the post-Panama scenario, it has shown that it understands constituency-level politics, and has successfully taped over internal fractures and fended off external threats. Nawaz and Maryam together manage the politics and media messaging, Shahbaz Sharif is the prime minister-in-waiting with a reputation as a doer, while in-fighting isn’t allowed to create hurdles to the goal of winning elections.
Imran Khan and the PTI emerged as strong contenders in 2013 on the wave of idealism. But as Imran Khan pursued Nawaz relentlessly, his party came to look like the status quo it claimed to combat. The rivalry between two key lieutenants is undercutting electoral victories. Meanwhile, it is hard to see a successor to Imran’s leadership. More importantly, whether it’s corruption or election fraud, action has fallen far short of the rhetoric.
If politics is like a game of poker, and the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz got dealt with a high card only to win the round, it is because Imran Khan folded with a flush.
• Amber Rahim Shamsi is an award-winning multimedia journalist who hosts the Newswise news and current affairs show on Dawn News. She has worked with the BBC World Service as a bilingual reporter, presenter and producer. Twitter: @AmberRShamsi
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