IT is a near perfect storm for the PML-N. Its leader, Nawaz Sharif, has been ousted from the prime minister’s office and barred from officially leading the party. There is an election scheduled for next year and a fierce electoral fight with the PTI is on the cards. Meanwhile, Mr Sharif’s determination to keep control of the party while questioning the role of state institutions in undermining democracy in the country has likely created an acute dilemma for a number of party leaders: stay loyal to Mr Sharif, whose political future is uncertain, and risk an uncertain political future for themselves, or seek other political options, preferably a less strained relationship with the military-led establishment? The war of words that has broken out between former PML-N cabinet colleagues Pervaiz Rashid and Nisar Ali Khan is a remarkable indication of the tensions inside the PML-N.

The problem for the PML-N is that it has a leader who has clashed frequently with institutions, but neither its core supporter nor party member has traditionally sought confrontation. Indeed, in Mr Sharif’s increasingly unvarnished criticism of the judiciary and implicit denunciations of the military establishment’s historical political role in the country, there are two reactions discernible within the PML-N: apprehension and excitement. The excitement would suggest the possibility of a seemingly impossible evolution of a party created by the establishment into a genuine force for democratic good. The apprehension would suggest that a patronage-based PML-N political network is focused on self-preservation and concerned about the possibility of being shut out from the political system because of Mr Sharif’s intransigence. At one level, it is healthy that there is a debate of any kind taking place within a political party. Virtually all political parties are run in dictatorial fashion by their leaders and debate is often explicitly discouraged. At another level, the debate within the PML-N reflects the deep distortions in the political and democratic systems of the country.

What is obvious is that the PML-N needs to decide on a clear, democratic strategy soon. The party appears to have almost forgotten that it is, in fact, still running the federal government. Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi has brought fresh energy to his unexpected new job, but a bloated cabinet suggests no real governance direction. Meanwhile, figures such as Chaudhry Nisar should make clear their political intentions. If elements within a political party want to leave or create a new party, that is not inherently undemocratic. But if such possibilities are being entertained to align themselves with state institutions that constitutionally should remain outside the political sphere, then the democratic process will surely suffer. At the moment, there is no one in the PML-N, including Mr Sharif, who appears to have clarity about the kind of party that the PML-N ought to be and the political direction it should carry itself in. That needs to change.

Published in Dawn, August 20th, 2017