Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: As Prime Minster Nawaz Sharif is recovering fast after his successful open-heart surgery in London, differences among top leaders of his party seem to be intensifying at home.

Reliable sources told Daily Times that two ministers in the Sharif cabinet — Khawaja Asif and Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan — had an old enmity and they were not even at speaking terms with each other. Both leaders have publicly admitted their disliking for each other. And now the interior minister has also developed some problems with Finance Minister Ishaq Dar.

Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) insiders said the interior minister felt that he was the senior most member of the cabinet; therefore, it was his right to look after the affairs of the state in the absence of the prime minister. The prime minister however entrusted Dar with the task of looking after state affairs in his absence.

The interior minister is unhappy because Dar and Maryam, daughter of the prime minister, who were working as prime minister’s deputies in his absence from the country, never consulted him on any matter in prime minister’s absence. In the absence of the prime minister, Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif had been very close to Dar.

In the past, the relations between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan deteriorated, but then Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif mediated between the two and brought their relations back on the track. In the wake of the Panama leaks, the interior minister emerged as the strongest candidate for the office of the prime minister after the movement for an in-house change picked up momentum. This option was ruled out later.

As far as in-house change was concerned, Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman, chief of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F), and majority of the ruling party lawmakers backed the interior minister as new prime minister of the country.

Seeing interior minister’s ‘homework’, Sharif disregarded the proposal of an in-house change and decided to give the charge of his office to his close friend Dar and his daughter Maryam.

Due to cracks in the top tier of the ruling party, the PML-N is considering leaving the government a year earlier. The PML-N can provoke Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan and Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) chief Dr Tahirul Qadri to bring them on the streets, and quit the government. This move is aimed at providing the PML-N an opportunity to claim in the next general election campaign that it would have completely overcome electricity load shedding if it had been allowed to complete its constitutional tenure.

The sources told Daily Times that the ruling party would make some important decisions with reference to opposition’s protest movement on the return of the prime minister from London. The party will also gain public sympathy by holding the general election one year ahead of time, as experts have told the government that it cannot end electricity load shedding by 2018. Using the opposition’s protest movement as an excuse, the prime minister may announce the next general election in the country.

According to the sources, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is satisfied with the performance of Maryam and Dar in his absence.