Division grows in Pakistan’s ruling party

Sharif is the only leader in PML-N, minister tells Arab News

ISLAMABAD: The ouster of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has created a deepening rift in his own Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party.

Sharif was sacked and disqualified for life by the Supreme Court in July following an investigation into corruption allegations against his family originating from the Panama Papers leak.

Sharif’s troubles deepened on Thursday when Pakistan’s accountability court issued a warrant for his arrest in two cases of alleged corruption after he failed to appear in court. The former prime minister is currently abroad. The hearing was adjourned until Nov. 3.

While the PML-N re-elected Sharif as party president on Oct. 3, having pushed through a change in the law — and although Sharif’s wife, Kalsum, won his vacated assembly seat in Lahore in September — dissenters within the party have emerged, demanding that Sharif’s younger brother Shahbaz, currently chief minister of Punjab, should replace Nawaz as party leader.

“Shahbaz Sharif should come forward and take charge of the party,” Riaz Hussain Pirzada, minister for inter-provincial coordination, told Arab News. “Nawaz Sharif is embroiled in corruption cases and won’t be able to lead the party in general elections.”

Pirzada is believed to have the backing of more than two dozen PML-N members of the National Assembly.

“We will announce our future course of action at an appropriate time,” he said, while hinting that he could formally announce a separate bloc in the party by the end of the year.

Arab News has learned that a group of more than 25 legislators who represent the PML-N in the Punjab Assembly are also demanding that Shahbaz be installed as party leader, and have held several secret meetings to discuss their future in the party.

Two disgruntled legislators confided in Arab News that they will announce a forward bloc in the party before March’s senate elections if Sharif fails to step aside.

The PML-N currently has 37 senators out of 104 in the Senate, and should be able to elect its own Senate chairman — one of the most important political positions in Pakistan — in the March elections, if the party can remain united.

But, for Raja Ashfaq Sarwar, minister for labor and human resource, that seems unlikely.

“At the moment, we are clueless and confused due to lack of a clear leadership in the party,” Sarwar, who is also an active member of the dissident group, told Arab News.

“This confusion will cost us heavily in the upcoming Senate and general elections,” he continued.

The government’s five-year term expires in June next year and general elections are scheduled to be held in August.

Sarwar also highlighted pending petitions in the Supreme Court asking that the law that allowed Sharif to be re-elected as president of the party be abolished as unconstitutional.

“We are ready to request Nawaz Sharif to relinquish the party leadership in a closed-door meeting, but only if he gives us time for it,” Sarwar concluded.

But those loyal to Sharif and his political heir-apparent — daughter Maryam, also indicted by the accountability court on Oct. 19 — will not countenance Shahbaz taking over as party leader.

Minister of State for Interior Muhammad Tallal Chaudry told Arab News: “There is only one leader in the PML-N and he is Nawaz Sharif.”

Some loyalists, Chaudry included, warn that the plan to install Shahbaz as party leader is an establishment plot to break up the PML-N.

“We know how to counter all these gimmicks,” Chaudry said. “And we are doing it effectively under the leadership of Nawaz Sharif.”