PML(N) Quaid Mian Nawaz Sharif goes on behaving the way he has since returning to the country from self-imposed exile; as the anointed future Prime Minister. In a scene reminiscent of the 2018 election, only Mian Nawaz took the place of PTI chief Imran Khan. Perhaps the symbol of what was happening was concentrated in the person of Jam Muhammad Kamal. He had served as a minister of state under Mian Nawaz and then Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, but jumped ship in 2018, joining the Balochistan Awami Party and then becoming chief minister when it formed the government. BAP first formed part of Mr Khan’s coalition, but then left him and joined the PDM in forming its government. PML(N) veterans might like to see this latest development as lost PML(N) sheep coming back to the fold, but it seems more a matter of electables making up their minds as to who is heading for a win, and trying to get a toe in the door. A less charitable view is that those who were delivered in 2018 to the PTI are now being delivered to the PML(N).
It seems the party which contested the 2018 election with the slogan vote ko izzat do (respect the vote) has become a prisoner of the very forces that toppled it, and is eager to take any help it can get to return to power. It may be that that is the only way of obtaining power in Pakistan. If that is the case, then there is very little chance that the people of Pakistan will be heard. The much-touted consensus within the establishment that there would be no further interference in politics, somethin added by none other than then COAS Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, seems to have gone out of the window, and it seems to be business as usual.
Mian Nawaz may find that electables come at a price. Though they bring enough seats to win a government, they come with strings attached. Part of the problem is the opacity. No one knew what Mr Khan had agreed to in 2018; and no one knows what commitments Mian Nawaz might have made now. This opacity is precisely the reason for the exclusion of the people from a process in which they are supposed to be the ultimate decision-makers; they do not know what has been committed in their name.
