In the latest episode of what is increasingly looking like a stampede, senior vice-president of the PML-N Makhdoom Javed Hashmi has bid adieu to his party and crossed over to Imran Khan’s PTI. With his entry and with many other notables from southern Punjab — including Shah Mehmood Qureshi and the Leghari brothers amongst others — the political standing of the PTI is likely to gain prominence, much to the dismay of the PML-N for obvious reasons, as well as the PPP, whose stronghold it is supposed to be. After the coup in 1999 by General Pervez Musharraf, the Sharif brothers chose exile to Saudi Arabia over imprisonment in Pakistan. It was during their absence that Javed Hashmi took up the responsibility of the PML-N as its acting president. He stood up against the Musharraf regime and was wrongfully arrested for inciting mutiny in the army, forgery and defamation, for which he was sentenced to 23 years in prison. However, after having spent nearly four years in jail he was released on bail in 2007 when Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Chaudhry was reinstated. Even after his release, Javed Hashmi rendered contributions to his party, despite illness along the way. Unfortunately, the Sharif brothers not only sidelined him and disregarded his services for the party, Nawaz Sharif made no effort to assuage some of his reservations about party decisions. It is no wonder then that the disgruntled and unappreciated Mr Hashmi made up his mind to move on. There is no denying that the departure of a principled politician such as Javed Hashmi is a huge setback to the PML-N. Moreover, it is important to note that dissidence within the party is not confined to leading members of the party. Party member and senior analyst Ayaz Amir has criticised Nawaz Sharif for knocking on the doors of the Supreme Court with a petition to conduct an inquiry into the Memogate scandal — without having exhausted the proper forum of the executive and parliament — and has even called it a conspiracy against democracy. It appears that the inability of the PML-N leadership to handle emerging dissidence and failure to adequately appease the concerns of its members is contributing to a growing sense of disillusionment within the party. Perhaps this is a wake-up call for Nawaz Sharif to stop taking his party members for granted and start taking them on board before taking important decisions in the future. *