Nawaz Sharif, former Prime Minister who was disqualified by the Supreme Court of Pakistan for not being honest and truthful, and his daughter Maryam Nawaz has announced to topple the ‘incompetent’ and ‘anti-people’, and ‘selected’ government of Prime Minister Imran Khan. Nawaz Sharif on Thursday demanded “Imran’s selectors” to answer for the ongoing crises in the country, saying that his supporters “will not sit back” until they get one. Nawaz made the remarks in a virtual address at a convention of PML-N’s parliamentarians and ticketholders, saying that the country was facing “defining moments”.
Some analysts and PML-N leaders are of the view that Nawaz has decided to challenge the establishment for the sake of civilian supremacy in Pakistan. The argument relies on the recent speeches of the former Premier and his daughter’s tweets. “You see there is a different Nawaz now. You cannot stop him now,” a PML-N worker told GVS.
Read more: Nawaz Sharif – The unacceptable face of our politics
However, there is another view held by journalists and academics because of Nawaz’s past. GVS explores that view and presents a brief background of Nawaz’s politics.
Nawaz’s family-centric approach
Nawaz Sharif has been in Pakistan politics for the last more than three decades; he was made the CM Punjab in the 1980s and later on the country’s prime minister. However, due to some personal and organizational lapse of his party, he failed to complete his tenure in the office. Nawaz was ousted from his office by the Supreme Court of Pakistan in 2017 as he “was no longer honest and truthful”.
Nawaz’s political model is often termed as family-centric due to its inherent dynastic posture. Maryam and Hamza are said to be the political hires of revolutionary Nawaz, who claims to overthrow the existing system
The former ruling party—PML-N— is now advancing an argument that Nawaz has crossed all the limits, and became a staunch supporter of democracy in Pakistan. However, political analysts are of the view that Nawaz Sharif did not cross the red line. Nawaz has, argue commentators, sent a message that “he and his followers have not lost their fire especially if the pressure on them is ratcheted up,” wrote Arifa Noor, Dawn’s former Resident Editor, in Islamabad.
Noor also pointed out that Nawaz did not name those behind the present-day political engineering; “The former premier remembered that a retired officer had a role to play in the fall of the Noon government in Balochistan but not the names of the ones who may have tinkered with the no-confidence move against the Senate chairman or the vote in the joint session last week. The omissions were more telling than the stories told and the people named,” she maintained.
Read more: New challenge for Nawaz Sharif: Senate amends Election Act 2017
Why is Maryam Nawaz being like an assertive politician?
A source in PML-N claimed that Maryam’s outrage is primarily due to the case recently registered in Lahore. According to the details, a piece of land measuring over 3,568 Kanals was bought by the Sharif family in 2013. The largest part of the property, 1,936 Kanals, was transferred in the name of Nawaz’s mother Shamim Bibi. The land that was transferred to Maryam was 1,440 Kanals. A 96-Kanal plot each was also transferred to Nawaz and Shahbaz. The sources claimed most of the land was government land which the Sharif family illegally got transferred in their name at cheap rates. Moreover, only the LDA had the authority to deal with such matters but the Sharif family involved local government officials. The property was declared as green land to stop construction around the Sharif family’s Jati Umra mansions.