Is Shehbaz Sharif Ready To Take Over The Leadership Mantle!

Named as the face of the opposition, Shehbaz Sharif steps out of his brother’s shadow and seems ready to take over the leadership mantle

- Ajish P. Joy

In the fall of 1999, when General Pervez Musharraf found out that prime minister Nawaz Sharif was planning to sack him as army chief following the Kargil misadventure, he moved quickly to meet Punjab chief minister Shehbaz Sharif. Musharraf told the younger Sharif that the army wanted him to replace his elder brother as prime minister. But Shehbaz made it clear to the general that he would never betray Nawaz. A few days later, Nawaz ordered Musharraf’s dismissal, but the army deposed the two brothers in a quick, bloodless coup. A year later, they were banished to Saudi Arabia.

It was not just the army that had tried to turn Shehbaz against Nawaz. According to senior journalist Hamid Mir, back in 1992, when Shehbaz was just a junior member of parliament, president Ghulam Ishaq Khan offered him the top post after a tiff with Nawaz. The Benazir Bhutto government even jailed Shehbaz in 1995 to force him to testify against Nawaz in a corruption case. But Shehbaz has always placed fraternal loyalty above everything else and has spent his three-decades-long public life in his big brother’s shadow.

Shehbaz was born on September 23, 1951, in Lahore, to industrialist and businessman Muhammad Sharif and Begum Shamim Akhtar. He joined the family business after his graduation from Government College, Lahore.

Shehbaz started his political career by winning an election to the Punjab provincial assembly in 1988 on a Pakistan Muslim League ticket. Nawaz was then the province’s chief minister. In 1990, when Nawaz became prime minister, Shehbaz was elected to the parliament. Shehbaz, however, focused more on Punjab and became the province’s chief minister in 1997, the same year his brother was elected prime minister for the second time.