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Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) leader Nawaz Sharif has sent his daughter, Maryam Nawaz, to Pakistan after elevating her to the posts of senior vice-president and chief organizer of the party, leading to Shahid Khaqan Abbasi gracefully stepping down from the same post—while remaining a part of the party. Maryam’s organizational role, reportedly decided without consultations, strengthens the general assumption that the PMLN’s vote bank belongs to Nawaz Sharif and no one else—including Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, whose public popularity is at an all-time low. This development is being seen by political observers as Sharif’s bid to shore up his leadership ahead of a planned return to Pakistan that has been pending for years now.
Pakistan is all-too familiar with the cult of the “family party,” most clearly evidenced by the Pakistan Peoples Party, which saw Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari succeed his mother Benazir Bhutto, who had succeeded her father Zulfikar Bhutto. This is also reflected in the wider South Asian region, with the Nehru-Gandhi family’s stranglehold over India’s Congress Party and the family of Mujibur Rehman’s leadership of the Awami League in Bangladesh. It is now time for the “Sharif family” to assume a similar role in Pakistan? The conditions for this are not particularly favorable. The party has dented its own vote-bank during the rule of incumbent P.M. Shehbaz Sharif, particularly due to financial constraints that have worsened after the replacement of former finance minister Miftah Ismail with the increasingly unimpressive Ishaq Dar. Related to Nawaz by marriage, Dar’s claim to fame has been an anti-IMF stance that he has had to walk back in recent weeks, accepting harsh “conditionalities” that economists believe should have been fulfilled months ago.
The Sharifs undoubtedly retain a vote-bank in Punjab, though it has been noticeably dented by the mass popularity of Imran Khan. The PPP faces the same situation in Sindh, though its lengthy rule of the province has helped it fend off inroads by the MQM and the PTI. In a one-to-one comparison, Nawaz Sharif’s offspring have yet to fulfill the condition of an “intellectual” legacy advanced by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s daughter. While there is some promise in Maryam, the conditions leading to her rise are far removed from those that led to Benazir’s advance.
The ideal democratic condition, naturally, inclines toward competence and popularity over family linkages. The biggest drawback of the “family party” tends to be subordination of intellectual merit, especially in the economic sphere, a dangerous prospect for financially stricken Pakistan. This, unfortunately, is a byproduct of Pakistan’s aim to be an “ideological” state, which unwittingly steers any nation against intellect.