PML-N infighting: Leadership shuffle threatens to derail poll drive

Senior political cadre in K-P appears willing to resign if no action is taken against Nawaz’s son-in-law.

ISLAMABAD:

A political storm of significant proportions is brewing within the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s (PML-N) leadership in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) with a face-off between its key leaders, Captain Muhammad Safdar, Sardar Mehtab Abbasi and Pir Sabir Shah, party sources at the senior level revealed.

“The top party leadership is looking for an appropriate opportunity to get rid of Pir Sabir Shah and Sardar Mehtab Abbasi, who threatened to resign from the party as a blackmailing tool to compel Nawaz Sharif to take disciplinary action against his son-in-law Captain Muhammad Safdar,” a source revealed to The Express Tribune.

The source added that Nawaz was offended by Shah and Abbasi, the provincial leaders of the party in K-P, as the matter could have been resolved within the party, instead of going public and providing ammunition to PML-N’s political rivals for the upcoming general elections. They said that the two used the threat of resignation to compel Nawaz to take action against Captain Safdar.

It has been revealed that Amir Muqam is being touted as Shah’s replacement. Muqam had left PML-Quaid to contest the elections against his former party by getting on board the PML-N train.

Sensing their inevitable removal from the PML-N, Shah and Abbasi are looking for the right time to ditch the party before they are sacked. Sources said that the tendering of an apology by Safdar, who is the chief of the PML-N’s youth wing, had further aggravated tensions between him and Shah and Abbasi.

Safdar was made to publicly apologise to Shah and Abbasi recently for issuing hostile statements against them over the organisational affairs of the party.

“The chapter is not closed even though Safdar has tendered an apology. He was served a show cause notice by the central leadership which has aggrieved him further,” a source said, adding that Safdar is aggrieved by the humiliation he had to suffer at the hands of Shah and Abbasi, while the two are of the view that Safdar is merely expressing what Nawaz has been planning – to field Muqam as a potential replacement for Shah as PML-N’s chief in K-P.

Another source stated that Shah and Abbasi were responsible for the political infighting by publicly maligning Safdar for voicing his opinion, which has now been labelled as a conspiracy against them to lobby for Muqam. In retaliation, Safdar is openly lobbying for Muqam to replace Shah, who has been called a liability for Nawaz and the party.

On the other hand, Shah and Abbasi are also aggressively lobbying against Nawaz’s son-in-law to muster political support in their favour.

The heated political rivalry between Shah and Abbasi in one corner and Safdar in the other is not a new phenomenon for the people of K-P, who are well aware of their tussle over the PML-N’s organisational matters. One source said that Safdar was annoyed with Shah and Abbasi for not heeding his advice on their handling of the party’s administrative affairs.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 2^nd, 2012.