The Endgame Begins

Will Nawaz’s conviction seal Imran’s premier moment? Or is it finally Shehbaz’s time? How Pakistan’s electoral battlefield is morphing, and where the chips will fall in the most important election since 1970

- Wajahat S. Khan

HamzaShahbaz Sharif is looking good. Twentyfour hours before the verdict that will convict his three-time prime minister uncle Nawaz Sharif, and fiery first cousin Maryam, Hamza, 42, who works out every day and sports his standard issue Ferrogamos with a blue shalwar kameez, is about to give his first interview in eons.

With just over two weeks left before the July 25 election, and his party under constant fire, Hamza has been keeping a low profile. But now he emerges, as it is finally evident that he and his father, Shehbaz—the three-time chief minister of Punjab province, younger brother and able deputy to Nawaz—are largely in the clear in this land of judicial filibustering and camouflaged coups.

With the legal disabling of the ‘other’ Sharifs (who were still in London at the time this article went to print, tending to Nawaz’s wife but promising to return by Friday the 13th, just 12 days before the polls, and expected to be arrested upon arrival and helicoptered straight to jail), the political reality at 180-H Model Town, Lahore—the secretariat of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), the only party in the country named after a living man—is clear: Hamza’s time has come. The obsequious army of valets, bureaucrats and advisors around him is definitely behaving like they believe it. But Hamza, a three-time member of the national assembly, and the chief electoral operator of the party, won’t actually admit it.

In the PMLN, not praising Nawaz— the 68-year-old who now faces 10 years of jail and another 10 years of political winter as he stands disqualified to run for public office after he’s completed his sentence for “living beyond means”—or elevating yourself is unwise. It’s also a breach of the rules.