Political Turmoil: What Next?

While PTI continues to tread a line of defiance, what will happen when Maryam Nawaz embarks on her mission to counter the PTI narrative?

Islamabad: Maryam Nawaz landed in Pakistan amid a simmering turmoil both in the country as well as within the party on the dominating role she has been given in the party by her father Nawaz Sharif, the supreme leader of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).

Sources in the PML-N informed Bol News that Maryam Nawaz, who was given the positions of senior vice president and chief organizer in the party in the recent past, has come with the mandate to take an aggressive line against some former army generals and top judges of the superior judiciary. So, coming days will see a heating up of the political atmosphere in the country which is already boiling with zero tolerance of each other among the political opponents.

The indication of the party taking a hostile line against the “select people” of the superior judiciary and the military establishment started surfacing when Maryam Nawaz’s spouse, Captain (retd.) Mohammad Safdar, and Federal Minister Mian Javid Latif, lashed out at the former Army chief and his cronies in the military establishment for their murky role in ousting PML-N from power back in 2018.

Meanwhile, political turmoil in the country is aggravating by every passing day mainly due to growing intolerance among the political rivals who, instead of steering the country out of this crisis, are endangering the very existence of democratic order.

The return of Mayam Nawaz will strengthen the party leaders with hawkish tendencies, who right now are on the backburners because Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his associates have adopted a conciliatory course to avoid any confrontation with the establishment, political analyst Naeemullah Khan, said. Coming days and weeks will see hawks taking the lead in the party, pushing down those at the helm right now, he added.

Maryam Nawaz’s return has not gone well with the senior party leaders. Some of them have started expressing their views in their private meetings, while others, like Khawaja Asif and Rana Tanvir, have kept quiet over this new development, as they are of the view that sooner or later the party leader, Mian Nawaz Sharif, will return to the country and things will automatically fall in their right places.

Sources in the PML-N informed that although Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was unhappy with the development, he refrained from offering his reaction to it. However, people in his camp, who were quite active up until recently, have become virtually dormant following this new development.

People like Mian Javed Latif and Talal Chaudhry have welcomed the decision, however, and are optimistic that Nawaz Sharif will also return to the country before the next general elections.

A senior PML-N leader, requesting anonymity, said that by-and-large the party leadership had accepted the new role of Maryam Nawaz in the party, because no one, including Shehbaz Sharif could challenge Nawaz Sharif’s decision.

He further said that people like Shahid Khaqan Abbassi, who have objected to Nawaz Sharif taking unilateral decisions and giving so much powers to Maryam Nawaz, would either fall in line like the rest of the senior cadres, or will be pushed out of the party. The fate of Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, once a most powerful man in the party after Nawaz Sharif, is a pertinent example of deviating from the party line, he added.

Political analysts say that the acceptability of Maryam Nawaz in her new role in the party will depend on her attitude towards the senior party leaders and handling party affairs as its chief organizer.

One thing is clear, though, that from now on the PML-N is going to launch aggressive politics and would target former top men in the military establishment as well as the superior judiciary, according to analysts. The policy line could be to rejuvenate the earlier party slogan of ‘Vote Ko Izzat Doo’ (respect the public mandate), which had fallen midway when Shehbaz Sharif became the party head.

Maryam Nawaz will be holding party conventions across the plains of Punjab over next few weeks, and will reorganize the party before the return of her father, Nawaz Sharif, who is expected to be in the country before the next general elections. She will also have a decisive role in allocating party tickets for the upcoming Punjab Assembly elections. “Actually, Nawaz Sharif wanted to establish her as his political heir and successor in the party before his landing back into the country,” a senior party leader remarked.

Meanwhile, political parties in the ruling alliance, and the leadership of the main opposition party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), are at daggers drawn with each other and not ready to talk to each other to fulfill their constitutional obligation of holding smooth elections.

To further add to the political turmoil, the ruling Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) alliance has instituted a sedition case against a central leader of the PTI, Fawad Chaudhry. He was rounded up from Lahore and brought to Islamabad in an unceremonious way. The PTI, on its part, has taken to the Supreme Court to challenge what it calls a controversial appointment to the position of the caretaker chief minister of Punjab.

Commenting on this precarious political situation in the country, a central leader of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan, said that its results could be dangerous. “Although, in Pakistan, one can only comment on the past, and can’t predict the future, the prevailing political polarization will not be bringing any good for the country.”

Insiders in the PDM government say that in the coming days, the government could order the arrest of more PTI leaders, and that even the arrest of PTI Chairman, Imran Khan, could not be ruled out.

These sources said that actually the ruling elite do not want to go into elections, and so they are messing up things to a level which will pave the way for a third party intervention, or delay elections on some other pretext, like the imposition of some sort of an economic emergency.

The Governors of both the Punjab and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) provinces are also delaying to announce an election date as part of the PDM’s strategy to create chaos and uncertainty in the country.

Secretary-General of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), Ameerul Azeem, is of the view that things are being deliberately messed up to a level to justify an unconstitutional intervention to delay the elections. Any unconstitutional attempt to derail the economy will have a disastrous fallout, he warned.

The PTI has already moved the Lahore High Court against the “undue delay” on part of the Punjab Governor to announce an election date for Punjab Assembly, terming it a violation of Article 105 of the Constitution.

Political analysts fear that in coming days political polarization will increase due to two developments; first, the government is reluctant to hold provincial assembly elections in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP); and second, the government has aggravated the political turmoil by accepting 123 resignations of the PTI members National Assembly. Holding by-elections on such a big number of seats across the country will not be an easy task, they say.