Nawaz Sharif’s movement for justice

• A strategy that may not help

What Nawaz Sharif wants to do in days to come is to present himself as a politician who has been more sinned against than sinning. The movement for the ‘restoration of justice’ is in fact a movement for his own restoration as the prime minister. There is little possibility of its success.

Maryam Nawaz, the official interpreter of Sharif’s new-found ‘ideology’, says Sharif wants an ‘undiluted democracy’ where once elected a prime minister cannot be disqualified by a court irrespective of the gravity of his crime, be it criminal misuse of authority, nepotism, money laundering or an act that brings disgrace to his office and bad name to the country. The so called ideology is self- serving and alien to democratic traditions

Both Maryam and Nawaz have put the SC and the military leadership in crosshairs. While maintaining that his movement for justice is not meant to target the judges, Sharif continues to accuse the judiciary of maintaining double standards and depriving him of fair trial by disallowing any appeal against the judgment which disqualified him. By insisting that the actual reason behind Sharif’s disqualification was the registration of the case against Musharraf the two are in fact blaming the army for his removal. The judges have no soft corner for Musharraf while the former military ruler had disclosed last year, and no quarter contradicted, that former COAS had facilitated his escape from the clutches of the law.

The PML-N camp is in disarray. There were dissenting voices when Sharif got himself re-elected party chief. A section of the right wing voters that had always supported him are up against him. Sharif has badly annoyed PPP which had acted as a friendly opposition for full four years. Imran Khan poses a serious challenge in the coming elections. A number of disgruntled politicians from other parties have already joined the PTI. More are likely to follow suit. There is little likelihood of the PML-N gaining as many seats as it did in 2013. Any move in the parliament to introduce a person-specific amendment to please Nawaz Sharif is likely to be resisted by most of the opposition parties.