Nawaz Sharif is back in Pakistan after spending four years in exile in London. In fact, he had taken the plea of ill health in November 2019 when he was in jail for corruption, claiming that his platelet count had dropped, and his health had become precarious. It has come out now that then Army Chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa had arranged false medical reports to facilitate his escape from Pakistan.

There has been a flurry of activity after he arrived in Pakistan last week as his party the PML (N) feels confident. The public meeting organised at Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahore on 21 October was attended by about eighty thousand people. Nawaz comes from a family of ‘Bhat’ Kashmiri Brahmins who migrated around the 1870s to Amritsar from Anantnag district of Kashmir. His great grandfather Khudda Baksh Bhat used to sell flowers in Amritsar, his son Ramzan Sharif migrated to Jati Umra village in Tarn Taran District of Punjab around 1900 and started doing the work of a blacksmith. One of his seven sons, Mian Mohammed Sharif, was born in 1919 and after his matric from Government High School, Taran Tarn, went to Lahore and studied there in DAV college for two years up to 1939 and did his F.A. (12th Class) before getting employment.

He along with his brothers started working in a small foundry and when the Hindu owner left for India in 1947, he changed the name and called the industrial unit Ittefaq Foundry. Nawaz Sharif is the eldest son of Mian Mohammed Sharif. He graduated with a law degree from Punjab University, Lahore and went on to work in his family’s steel business. Nawaz entered politics, joining the Pakistan Muslim League (PML), after his family business was nationalised under the government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. This was also the beginning of a long political rivalry between the two families.

Sharif joined the Punjab provincial cabinet as finance minister in May 1981 and then become Punjab’s chief minister on 9 April 1985. He remained in this post till August 1990. The PML later split, and Nawaz formed the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).

It is pertinent to mention that Nawaz Sharif was fully patronized and supported by the then Governor and Doon school educated Martial Law Administrator of Punjab, Lt. Gen Ghulam Jilani Khan. It was he who included him as Finance Minister in his Cabinet in Punjab for the first time.

Nawaz Sharif has been Prime Minister in the past – from 6 November 1990 to 18 July 1993; 17 February 1997 to 12 October 1999 and 5 June 2013 to 28 July 2017. In all three tenures he was removed from power before completion of his term. Nawaz Sharif’s first term as PM was cut short when he was removed from the post by President Ghulam Ishaq Khan in 1993.

Although he was reinstated by the Supreme Court, he had to resign under pressure from the Establishment. In the same year, his party lost elections to the Pakistan People’s Party of Benazir Bhutto, daughter of Zulfiqar Bhutto. Sharif was elected as PM for the second time in 1997 and it was during this term that Pakistan successfully tested nuclear weapons in response to India’s atomic explosions.

Overthrown in a military coup by General Pervez Musharraf on 12 October 1999, he was convicted of corruption and given a life sentence for hijacking over an incident when he ordered Musharraf’s plane not to land in Islamabad. He was allowed to go to exile in Saudi Arabia in the period between 2000 and 2007 and was given a presidential pardon the day his family left.

Sharif returned from exile in 2r008 as part of a political deal that ended Musharraf’s military rule but lost the elections to Benazir Bhutto’s party, who was assassinated ahead of the polls on 27 December 2007. He was elected as prime minister for the third time in 2013. In April 2016, the leaked Panama Papers showed the involvement of Sharif’s family in offshore companies including luxury homes in London and other properties. His Avenfield apartments in London are very costly and are worth more than £15 million.

As Sharif denied any wrongdoing, Imran Khan threatened to paralyse Islamabad with a “lockdown” of street protests unless an independent investigation was carried out into the Panama revelations. After setting up a judicial commission to probe the corruption charges, the Supreme Court in 2017 declared Sharif disqualified from office for not declaring income from a company in United Arab Emirates, which was not in the original Panama Papers revelations.

In October 2017, he was indicted in another corruption case relating to a Dubai-based company. In April 2018, the SC ruled that Sharif was banned from political office for life. After Sharif left for London in Nov 2019, he was declared a proclaimed offender in the Al-Azizia and Avenfield corruption cases for his continuous absence from the proceedings on appeals against the sentences. It is perspicacious that Nawaz is being helped nay fully supported by the establishment led by Gen Asim Munir, the chief of the Army Staff. Also, he has a vaulting hatred for Imran Khan and his party, the Tehrik[1]E-Insaf.

Thirty Thousand workers of Imran’s party are in jail after the 9 May 2023 attacks on military establishments and burning of the Lahore Corp Commander’s house. There is a school of thought that the Gen Asim Munir-led establishment may not allow Nawaz a fourth term because he starts confronting and asserting himself after taking over as Prime Minister. So the Islamabad pundits predict the Prime Ministership for his brother Shehbaaz Sharif, Deputy PM-ship for his daughter Maryam and Shehbaaz Sharif’s son Hamza taking over as CM of Punjab. What exactly is going to happen would be known only in the weeks and months that follow. But one thing is certain – in the case of Pakistan, the future is always unpredictable.

(The writer has been a senior IAS officer of the Punjab Cadre and can be contacted at kaushikiaspunjab@gmail.com)