Knocking at the window

There is something of a spat developing between former interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan and Maryam Nawaz, with the latter being currently heavily promoted as having a prominent role in the future of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). Nisar is no longer the force he once was, and his opting out of the party mainstream has done little good either for himself or the party he has long been a member of. He is very publicly at odds with the ousted titular head of the party that was his political home ere long, and he has yet to adapt to being beyond the pale.

The ex-minister has said that he will quit the PML-N if Maryam Nawaz was made its leader, an option he never had to exercise but an indication of the depth of the rift between the two. He has said that in the last year he has cut himself off from mainstream politics and concentrated on his constituency and despite his differences with the party leadership, mostly related to the fallout from the Panama Papers affair, he has tried ‘not to hurt the party.’

Despite this it appears that Nisar is willing to take the gloves off if he continues to suffer from ‘the razor-sharp tongue’ of Maryam Nawaz who has been probably wisely restrained in her own responses. Much is going to hinge on just how much support Nisar has within the PML-N, and whether that support can be parlayed into a bloc that would be prepared to coalesce publicly around him. His sense of victimhood may be experienced in ignorance and isolation, and unaware that he is alone — or it may be that there is a latency that his own disaffection will potentiate. He has obliquely criticised other party figures, and alluded to conspiracies involving ‘blue-eyed journalists’ who persist in asking him awkward questions. We suspect Nisar’s window-knocking will be to no avail, and he will continue to be ignored.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 24^th, 2018.

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