It’s quite common for politicians in Pakistan to launch public attacks on their opponents, berating them with the choicest words and dragging their personal lives to score points. So is the case nowadays with PML-N’s Shahbaz Sharif – while the rest of his party has been sober, the junior Sharif is the unshaken lone crusader against Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and its Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari.

Mr Sharif rarely misses out on any opportunity to ask for looted public money stashed away in foreign banks to be brought back and to label President Zardari as the top thief of the country, and he is also ever-ready to hang in public any person found involved in corruption if his party is given the mandate to run the government. To him, President Zardari symbolises every bad thing happening to the country.

In his ‘rants’ against Mr Zardari in some recent public gatherings, Mr Sharif became so emotionally charged up that his supporting staff had to intervene to calm him down and keep him standing on his feet, while his party colleagues advised him not to cross the limits. Even the most hostile members of the PML-N, such as leader of the opposition in the National Assembly Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, Khawaja Asif and Khawaja Saad Rafique, are cool as cucumber when compared to the younger Sharif.

When Dawn asked a PML-N office-bearer to explain Chief Minister Punjab’s erratic behaviour, he said: “One, right or wrong, Mian Shahbaz Sharif believes that PPP co-chairman is the most hated person in the country at the moment, so criticising him would always earn him some brownie points in the public eye. His hate towards President Zardari is an open secret even within the PML-N’s rank and file.”

The office-bearer added: “Secondly, hard to accept within the PML-N and much harder to say to the face of the party leadership, it’s a fact that the party has failed to provide good governance in the province and Mian Shahbaz Sharif being the chief executive has started feeling the heat on this abject failure.”

Thus, to hide his failure, “he is putting the blame on the federal government and ensures that during his public outings, he condemns the federal government,” said the PML-N official who didn’t want to come on record.

On the other hand, there are people within the PML-N who believe that Shahbaz Sharif’s rant against the PPP leaders is a displaced reaction to the multiple challenges his party faces at the moment. With the PPP set to complete its five-year constitutional term and its recent success in the Senate elections, “our party leaders at the moment look a little bit out of touch,” said one PML-N member.

Back in 2010, late Governor Punjab Salman Taseer and the current out-of-favour Senator Babar Awan were hell-bent on taking on the PML-N leadership regularly. At the same time, the soft-spoken Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani used to call up Mian brothers and assure them that the PPP government held them in high esteem, and never mind the antics of the two (Awan & Taseer) as they were being brats. But in the case of Mr Sharif, this does not look the same strategy.

When asked if it was a deliberate attempt on the part of the PML-N leadership, asking junior Sharif to keep on hitting out at the PPP co-chairman, the party official disagreed. “The rants are purely at the personal level of Punjab chief minister and not backed by the central leadership. If this were the case, there would’ve been more leaders who would be attacking the PPP and its co-chairman,” he argued.

Another senior PML-N member opined that in the presence of 24/7 live coverage and increasing number of newspapers, gone are the days when politicians used to move their constituents with their fiery speeches. “Be it the PPP, PML-N, PTI or any other political party, it has become difficult to fool voters any more. I don’t believe passing statements against each other will make any difference in the end,” he concluded.

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