Mayday in May?

May may bring things to a head for the PML-N and its Janus-faced approach towards the elephant in the room — the Establishment.



Nawaz Sharif and Maryam Nawaz display no overt signs of softening their approach towards the Judiciary and the Establishment even as the trial in the Accountability Court enters its final stages. If anything, Nawaz’s tone has hardened even more, though he appears to be choosing his words more carefully in public. The narrative that he unfurled on GT road is the narrative that he continues to peddle aggressively as his government enters its final month in office.

The final month is a crucial month for a variety of reasons. In this month, the caretaker set-ups at the Centre and the provinces will be announced. In this month, the Accountability Court will reach a decision on the Nawaz Sharif case. And in this month, the PML-N will need to figure out how to reconcile Nawaz’s narrative with that of his brother.

This dual narrative within the party though is reflective of more than two individuals’ beliefs and opinions. It is no secret that influential men and women within the party hierarchy differ in terms of the approach that the party as a whole needs to adopt as the election campaign draws near. Both schools of thought — so to speak — have weighty arguments to back up their position.

The Nawaz school of thought firmly believes that backing down from a hardline position would not only break the momentum of the narrative and show Nawaz as weakening, it would also signal to the electables and the voters that PML-N has run out of steam. The Nawaz camp therefore calculates that a tough line will continue to sell well to the voter; that it would show Nawaz as taking on the combined might of the Judiciary-Establishment-PTI troika against all odds. The logic is that this is the only chance that the party has to galvanise its base voter before elections.



The Shehbaz camp feels such reckless posturing may lead to a collision with the Establishment which may lead to unpredictable and dangerous consequences. In simpler words, a head-on collision may end up wrecking the system. Therefore, say proponents of this school, it is prudent and practical that the party retains a flexible stance and finds some common ground with the Establishment. “Us, them, we are all stakeholders in this system,” says a senior Leaguer from this camp. “We cannot wish them away so why not try find a way to agree on some rules of the game,” he argues.

This dual approach has worked fairly well for the last few months. While Nawaz and Maryam set the hardline tone and stitched together a narrative, Shehbaz stayed on the sidelines and perhaps kept the channel of communications open with key stakeholders. But after the courts removed Nawaz as president of the party, Shehbaz was thrust into the limelight. This had a two-pronged effect: a) it enabled Shehbaz to reach out to party people across the country and indulge in conversation with a frazzled party rank and file; b) it emboldened those who felt that Nawaz’s collision course would lead to a fragmentation of the party whereas Shehbaz’s more accommodating approach may discover a way out of the mess.

But as the final hour approaches, the luxury of co-existing with parallel narratives may not be a sustainable option for the party. Here’s why:

A Nawaz conviction is likely. Even he expects he will be found guilty. Two scenarios present themselves thus; either Nawaz goes to jail and his daughter does not, or both end up behind bars. In the first scenario, Maryam will then automatically become the campaigner-in-chief for the party along with Shehbaz. If she too is jailed, Shehbaz will be the lead campaigner, assisted of course by the second line of leadership.

In either case, the party feels its narrative will be turbo-charged once Nawaz is jailed. But wait. Which narrative?

At this point, the party cannot have a Nawaz narrative and a Shehbaz narrative. What happens then? If the party wants to play the victim card, it will lean into the Nawaz narrative — and Maryam (if she’s not in jail) will be well placed to light up the campaign trail with this hardened, no-holds-barred narrative. But if such an eventuality were to arise, what happens to the Shehbaz school of thought? What happens to the delicately built bridges and an inclusive approach aimed at mending things instead of smashing them further? And what happens to the electables still waiting around in the party in the hope that Shehbaz would avoid the dreaded collision?

If Nawaz and Maryam are both in jail, their school of thought would insist the party has no option but to exploit the situation by going full extreme on the victim card by blaming and shaming the system. Shehbaz would then be in a really tight spot — and so would the party.

And if this wasn’t complicated enough, consider the following:

If the victim card does indeed work; and if the electorate does begin to respond; and if the electables within the party do calculate that the ‘political martyrdom’ narrative is paying dividends; and if Punjab refuses to abandon the Sharif ticket; and if the party does look in a solid position to win against all these odds — then will the Establishment be okay with the PML-N returning to power at the Centre or in Punjab or in both? And if not, then what?

Shehbaz is walking a tight rope. He can either save the day for his family and his party, or be devoured by the avalanche that is rumbling across the other side of his brother’s conviction.



At some point this May, Nawaz will need to decide on the big questions. At some point this May, Shehbaz will need to calculate the prospects of his approach paying dividends. At some point this May, the Nawaz School and the Shehbaz School will need to figure out if it is even possible to amalgamate the two narratives into one. At some point this May it will need to be established if such an amalgamation even lies within the realm of possibility. And at some point this May, the PML-N will need to decide what its core is, who its core is and what does this core stand for?

Once the caretakers are in and the party is out of the corridors of power, it will face the full heat of the pressure being exerted from all sides. Before it is exposed to these extreme temperatures, it needs to figure out the contradictions within itself and take the necessary decisions.

And the time for these decisions is May. Tick tock tick tock.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 29^th, 2018.

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