A MUGGY August was livened up by Maryam Nawaz Sharif’s NAB adventure. In times when the authority’s constant sleuthing has become routine news, her decision to turn her visit to NAB into a rally and a drama has set the talk-show tongues wagging and how!

Has she broken her silence? Does this portend a change of mood for the PML-N? Is this a sign that the opposition is about to come out all guns blazing? The questions and speculation are unending.

The answers to most of these questions may not be in the affirmative but the street show did once again reveal a few truths and home truths.

First and foremost, Maryam Nawaz Sharif is the future leader of the PML-N, regardless of who is put in charge of the party and how much she stays away from the cameras. Dynastic politics and her father have marked her as the heir, and for the moment, little appears to stand in her way, except for time. And come election time, she will be the crowd-puller and the face of the party, even if the big seat is filled by someone else.

Read | Red zone files: The Maryam factor

For now, however, it is her father who is in charge and for some reason he is not willing to make his choice official even if he has made it public. This is why Shahbaz Sharif is the party president and Maryam is a party office holder among many others.

Dynastic politics and her father have marked Maryam as heir, and for now, little appears to stand in her way.

This leads to the second point that even now there are senior party leaders who may not be comfortable with her crowning. This discomfort, or perhaps just an unwillingness to defer to someone much younger as the leader, has been conjectured and written about but the NAB incident highlighted it too. Because when she held the press conference later in the day, some of these senior leaders, including Shahbaz Sharif, were not there.

More importantly, they were present at an earlier press conference where she made public the ‘confessions’ of judge Arshad Malik, even if it made them uncomfortable — the earlier press conference was about Nawaz Sharif and his unfair persecution and the one last week was about Maryam herself.

Third, this absence once again highlighted the friction within the party, which has come to be symbolised by Maryam Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif, for at times there is little effort to hide it.

Read | Fawad sees infighting in PML-N over leadership

He has been and continues to be criticised within party meetings, which are then ‘leaked’ to the press. And the criticism comes ostensibly from those seen to be close to his niece, such as Javed Latif.

Earlier this year, in July, the anniversary of the day Nawaz Sharif and Maryam Nawaz were arrested after returning from London, a Twitter trend called ‘airport wallah dhoka’ (in Urdu) could be seen among the social media platform’s top trends. Many of the tweets criticised Shahbaz Sharif by name for not ‘reaching the airport’ that day. One such tweet read: “Workers will never forget and will never forgive Mian Shahbaz Sharif” while another reminisced in these words, “That night when he arrived Pakistan with his daughter he expected million of people will come to airport to well come him but his own brother make him MAMOO at that night.”

It seemed as if the trend was run by party workers against the party president.

One can say that this public shaming of khadim-i-aala is possible because in the imagination (of the fandom) he has become the villain of Maryam’s fairytale and this interpretation has many watchers hooked.

Anyway, I digress (it is hard to avoid discussing Shahbaz Sharif when writing about Maryam Nawaz as it is hard to discuss either Musharraf or Iftikhar Chaudhry without bringing in the other).

Fourth, the young Noonie leader may have caused a storm in a teacup but it may not go entirely in her favour. Chances are that she will return to her hibernation in her Jati Umra towers than opt for an aggressive street campaign — after all the unacknowledged but entirely possible understanding which has allowed Nawaz Sharif to leave the country in exchange for a quiet and docile PML-N continues to be in place. But this time around it might not be so easy to deflect questions about it — earlier, when party leaders were asked about it they retorted by pointing out the media blackout of Maryam Nawaz and her rallies last year. Their argument was that why should she bother speaking if her statements were blacked out by the media. But, last week, her NAB visit was covered as was her press conference which followed. If her silence resumes, how will it now be explained?

But this might be the easier option, for if she does resume a more active (read aggressive) political role, it will highlight further the contradictions in the party’s ‘new’ strategy.

After all, the party’s strategy has changed; be it Maryam’s and Nawaz Sharif’s silence or Shahbaz Sharif’s pragmatism, to some extent they all are on the same page. And this is a page which has Imran Khan written on it prominently, and the military and the judiciary erased from it.

However, so far, this erasure has been blamed on Shahbaz Sharif. He is said to be the scaredy-cat who doesn’t want to upset the real powers. But the truth is that few in the party disagree with him — all one needs to do is pay attention to the interviews of the party leadership to find the proof. However, if Maryam takes on a more leading role, the responsibility of this decision will have to be shared by her. For sooner or later, someone will realise that the slogan of ‘vote ko izzat do’ or the more intellectual argument of ‘the country has to be run as laid down by the Constitution’ makes little sense if Imran Khan is the only one being attacked. These slogans point the finger elsewhere and at the moment, the party (including Maryam Nawaz) is trying to get away with wagging their fingers at the sky.

The writer is a journalist.

Published in Dawn, August 18th, 2020