ISLAMABAD: Shahbaz Sharif is the first Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly in Pakistan’s history after Khan Abdul Wali Khan, who has been arrested.
This kind of detention took place after 43 years. Wali Khan was arrested on February 8, 1975 after the assassination of Pakistan People’s Party leader Hayat Khan Sherpao in a bomb attack at the Peshawar University campus. While Wali Khan worked as the opposition leader for over three years prior to his arrest and was later replaced by his party stalwart Sherbaz Khan Mazari, Shahbaz Sharif assumed this position only a few weeks before his detention.
This is the second time that Shahbaz Sharif tastes the prison. Previously, he was arrested after Pervez Musharraf imposed Martial Law in October 1999, and remained under detention till December 10, 2000 when the Sharif family was exiled to Saudi Arabia. He, along with his brother deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and others, was convicted by an anti-terrorism court of Karachi in the plane hijacking case. While Nawaz Sharif and his daughter Maryam have been taking an aggressive line immediately after his Supreme Court-sanctioned ouster in July 2017, Shahbaz Sharif always maintained a dovish policy as he believed in having a working relationship with all the premier state institutions. He never uttered a single word that ignited or fueled confrontation or caused angst anywhere.
His strategy kept raising eyebrows even in the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) prompting its detractors to claim that the Sharif brothers have adopted the “good cop, bad cop” policy. While working as the Opposition Leader, Shahbaz Sharif detested disruption in the National Assembly also. The arrest was made just nine days before the by-elections in 37 national and provincial constituencies including two federal seats of Lahore. The electoral outcome will clarify how far the detention impacted the process negatively or positively. Some known pro-PML-N Twitter accounts hardly scoffed at Shahbaz Sharif’s arrest and instead pointed out that during the election campaign the party president did not raise even once the “respect the vote” slogan and always followed a soft line. They asserted that this approach damaged the PML-N instead of producing any benefits. With Nawaz Sharif still being in a state of shock and mourning owing to the death of his spouse Begum Kulsoom, avoiding any political talk and being unable to lead the party, the PML-N may face further hard times due to Shahbaz Sharif’s arrest. The opposition leader was spearheading the parliamentary party in the Lower House of Parliament by effectively taking part in the proceedings.
After the arrest of Nawaz Sharif and Maryam on July 13 due to their conviction by the Accountability Court in the London apartments’ reference, Shahbaz Sharif had kept away the party “hawks” and stopped involving them in the consultative process. These hardliners had otherwise been and are still close to Nawaz Sharif. Although the PML-N has been confronted with tough times before and after the July general elections, it has remained intact. Even in the election for a Senate seat in the Punjab Assembly the other day, its candidate bagged exactly the same number of votes that it has in the provincial legislature. There have been no desertions in the federal parliamentary party as well.
After Shahbaz Sharif’s non-availability in the National Assembly, the PML-N parliamentary party will pick up his stopgap replacement to lead it. Unlike different senior parliamentary leaders, Shahbaz Sharif regularly attended the proceedings. The arrest will heighten the political tussle particularly between the PML-N and its allied parties and the Imran Khan government. Already, there is not even a working relationship between the two sides as they continue to indulge verbal attacks and counter-attacks. Senior PPP leader Khursheed Shah has condemned the arrest. The PML-N’s natural reaction is that it is witch-hunting that has been persisting for a long time to target its top leaders especially the Sharif brothers.
