LAHORE: Thrice elected prime minister and each time ousted before completing his five-year term – twice on corruption charges and once for concealing assets, Nawaz Sharif was born into an upper-middle class industrialist family of Lahore on Dec 25, 1949.

Graduating from the Government College Lahore in business, he studied law from the Punjab University and joined active politics by embracing Air Marshal Asghar Khan’s Tehrik-i-Istiqlal in 1979.

In 1981, he was appointed by Gen Zia regime as Punjab finance minister and rose to the office of chief minister in 1985 in the non-party polls representing hitherto “unrepresented” urban constituency. He was re-elected to the same office in 1988 polls after the military dictator dissolved the assemblies.

He became prime minister in 1990 with the patronage of then President of Pakistan Ghulam Ishaq Khan and then ISI chief Hameed Gul, surpassing IJI leader and caretaker prime minister the late Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi.

Mr Sharif soon developed differences with then army chief Asif Nawaz Janjua and also with Mr Khan who dismissed his government on corruption charges in 1993 using powers under Article 58-2(B) introduced by Gen Zia regime. His famous speech telecast on national hookup vowing not to accept dictation from anyone made him a popular leader.

He was re-elected prime minister with two-thirds majority when President Farooq Leghari used 58-2(B) to oust Benazir Bhutto’s government also on corruption charges.

In a bid to dominate other power centres, he first sent President Leghari packing though the latter tried to seek help from the army. A mob of PML-N workers stormed the Supreme Court and later Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah was “overpowered” through a “coup” by brother judges.

His attempt to make the institution of army docile backfired when he made an abortive attempt to install Gen Ziauddin as army chief in place of Gen Pervez Musharraf, who ousted him in a bloodless coup on Oct 12, 1999.

Mr Sharif was arrested and imprisoned for life in a plane hijacking case but later exiled to Saudi Arabia along with his family under a deal brokered by the Saudi friends. Despite erosions in his party, the PML-N under pressure of military dictator Musharraf and all except one Sharifs in exile, it performed well in 2002 polls.

Making his comeback in 2007 he could not contest the 2008 polls due to some legal hitches though the PML-N won and formed a coalition government in Punjab. In the centre, his party remained in the PPP-led coalition government for a couple of months but parted with it when President Asif Zardari refused to restore the senior judges forced out by Gen Musharraf through the Nov 3, 2007 Emergency Plus.

He led a successful long march culminating in the restoration of Iftikhar Chaudhry-led judiciary on March 16, 2009 while Punjab had been put under Governor’s Rule.

In 2013 polls too, he secured a two-thirds majority to easily form governments in the Centre and Punjab. The PTI alleged rigging in the polls and staged a five-month sit-in in Islamabad in 2014 and later tried to lock down the federal capital in November 2016. The Nawaz government survived both the attempts only to face the final blow when the Panama Papers case opened in the Supreme Court.

Published in Dawn, July 29th, 2017