Daily Times

Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) left no stone unturned in giving leader of the opposition in Punjab Assembly, Hamza Sharif, a welcome fitting a hero as he emerged from jail after the Lahore High Court (LHC) granted him bail in a money laundering case. Vice President Maryam Nawaz was there to greet him in person and as many as 12 different camps were set up along the way with people beating drums and showering him with rose petals as they drove to his residence in the form of a caravan.

But careful observers of Pakistan’s political scene are already conjecturing about how this celebration might prove to be rather short-lived for PML-N. Maryam was all smiles and did what she could to make Hamza’s release appear as a triumph for the party and, more importantly, for the House of Sharif. Yet deep down she knows that her cousin’s return brings out into the open once again the question of just who will be given the reins of the party as its leadership passes to the next generation of the founding family. So far she has presented herself as the heir apparent, and with Shahbaz Sharif and his son both under arrest, senior party leaders that were not in National Accountability Bureau (NAB) lockup did indeed gravitate around her.

Now all that could change. For all her rhetoric she is still rather new to politics, whereas Hamza was mobilised a long time ago, and has much deeper interaction with the party rank and file. There’s also the general feeling that the Shahbaz branch of the family is far less hostile towards the so-called establishment while Nawaz’s recent no-holds-barred approach has caused numerous unnecessary problems for party workers. So a change of winds could well be in the offing as PML-N is forced to reinvent itself one way or the other. This was, after all, only inevitable because while Shahbaz always respected Nawaz enough to never try to upset the leadership hierarchy, things were never going to be so simple when time came for the children to divide the pie between themselves; and that time has now come. Such palace intrigue reveals the fiercely anti-democratic nature of PML-N, of course, and flies in the face of claims that it is fighting to save and protect the very institution of democracy in the country. But when you live and act like a royal family destined to rule, such scheming and plotting is part of the bargain. PML-N’s day in the sun could actually be the harbinger of the kind of change and infighting that will not leave its workers singing and dancing in joy for much longer. *