Nawaz likely to be hawkish in election campaign

ISLAMABAD: ‘Doves’ and ‘hawks’ in the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) stick with their passionate urgings to ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif in closed-door sessions to go with their separate, clashing narratives as he braces up for the campaign for the upcoming general elections.

Both sets of leaders are, however, committed to his stewardship while assertively propounding their line of reasoning. At times, a couple of stalwarts have gone public with their disagreement with Nawaz Sharif. He listens to all sides but makes his independent decision.

He has made it clear to both sets of opinion that he will not relent on his stand regarding the Supreme Court judgments against him and favouring Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan, and the accountability hammer targeting him alone.

The hawks manifestly outnumber the doves. Save negligible exceptions, those calling for a quiet policy are not vocal at least in public.

Then, there is a third view, rather pragmatic, in the PML-N that recommends to Nawaz Sharif a balanced policy, a mix of hard and soft lines without going to the extent where uncontrollable commotion is caused, affecting on-time elections, and where discrimination done to him is lost sight of.

PML-N insiders say Nawaz Sharif still more keenly hears the arguments of the ‘hardliners’ and eschews a docile line that, he feels, will hurt him as well as the party. They opine that had he not adopted the aggressive strategy during his GT Road travel in a cavalcade after his disqualification on July 28, the PML-N would have significantly suffered.

“The court-imposed ineligibility pushed us in a tight corner, and everyone in the party was wondering how it would walk out of the tight spot,” a PML-N leader, who frequently consults with the expelled premier, remarked to The News.

He said the scenario changed altogether as a result of Nawaz Sharif’s successful protest lasting four days. The initiative that the doves had strongly opposed, pleading that it would fuel confrontation with key State institutions and will be dangerous to go by the GT Road, in fact took the PML-N out of the dire straits, he said.

The PML-N leader said everyone in the party including those who forcefully advocated quitting the hardline would also benefit in the coming elections because of the improved condition of the party.

The approach embraced by Nawaz Sharif has now, though belatedly, even impressed some of those having pathological hatred against him, who have repeatedly read his political obituary over the past four years specifically after his disqualification.

One of them was heard saying in a TV programme that whatever the situation the PML-N has faced, its vote-bank has remained solidly intact. All of its federal and provincial legislators are glued to it, he said, changing his previous repetitive argument.

The PML-N leader said that Nawaz Sharif’s perpetrators would have become exceedingly emboldened to take more coercive measures to marginalise him politically if the former prime minister had just kept mum over his eviction on a trivial charge. He said that Nawaz Sharif has given the message loud and clear that he can’t be taken for granted and will agitate against the injustice done to him.

Over the past five months since his disqualification, Nawaz Sharif has not paid much heed to the calls of the doves for the simple reason that he is very angry and is not prepared to swallow the disgrace meted out to him.

Insiders say the ex-prime minister has not changed his team of principal advisers and aides, which is the same that had closely worked with him when he was the prime minister. He mostly consults with it on almost daily basis.

“As desired by the PML-N president, I am going to Lahore for consultations for two days,” one of its important members told this correspondent on Saturday. “All the crucial planning and strategy will be formulated during this discussion.”

Those counseling a submissive line have often been critical of this team of advisers, which, they claimed, was responsible for the sorry fate that Nawaz Sharif

met. But they forget the hard fact that although Nawaz Sharif has been thrown out of office a year before his five-year term was to expire, he has suffered no political damage or loss.

Rather, he has gained much that might not have been possible had he served his entire tenure.

The apparent scramble between the doves and hawks will be unabated in the months to come as the PML-N braces up for a fiercely-fought election in July in which it will not be having a smooth sailing. It prepares to overcome the heavy odds and crack the machinations, aimed at whittling down its electoral strength, on the force of the power of vote.

Nawaz Sharif will continue to showcase his narrative - how he was chucked out as per a plan; how the “beloved” was pampered and kept in the political arena; how the accountability process has been devised to encircle him; how sanctity of vote has to be ensured so that there is no trampling of the people’s mandate in future; how prime ministers will have to be saved from repeated ignominy brought about by their premature dismissals through conspiracies etc.