The centre-right Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) took on the challenge of the February 8 elections, but they had no idea that they would be facing the most unpredictable political contest in history, one that would take place in the dark on a live minefield.
The party, which is currently hanging out with the establishment, has the responsibility of posting a credible and respectable score on the poll board. The PML-N also needs to refute the idea that they are using the system’s protection to further their political agenda without giving away the whole game plan.
The ‘forces that will always be’ appear to have the league covered for everything after almost crippling PTI, the only political team to take on the PML-N on its home ground, Punjab. With the latter given the necessary power to place its supremo in the prime minister’s office a fourth time.
The PML-N ought to have felt very confident, with PTI leader Imran Khan detained and disqualified and the PTI cowed down otherwise. But the constant fear that permeates the PML-N ranks suggests that maybe not all is as it seems.
A plausible explanation for the PML-N’s lack of enthusiasm for the electoral process could be their fear of the party being destroyed in a shootout with another party.
Following its acceptance of the 16-month norm in April 2021, it lost political capital. That was a tug of war between two people; two people are at odds right now as well. On the surface, it appears like former prime minister Nawaz Sharif is reluctant to cede the party’s surviving members through a controlled election process.
The PML-N, and particularly Nawaz Sharif, have no desire to be associated with the establishment as their preferred party. Mian Nawaz Sharif had to fight hard to stand tall without such interventionary assistance; on October 6, 1993, he bid adieu to this form of patronage after the late Ghulam Ishaq Khan and Lieutenant General (r) Waheed Kakar abandoned him. Nawaz benefited greatly politically from this divorce.
