Nawaz’s Journey From Disgrace To Glory

Ishtiaq Ahmed: Today, a disgraced political leader who left the country for health and medical care reasons and then went into voluntary exile to void legal accountability returns to Pakistan, the land of ‘pure’ of which he was the prime minister on three separate occasions.
Readers will recall that Mian Nawaz Sharif, the former Prime Minister, was sentenced to 10 years in prison on corruption charges related to four luxury London flats by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB). This also automatically disqualified him from participating in any future elections of the country.
Mian Nawaz Sharif returns to Pakistan in glory. It should be fresh in the memories of the readers that following the ousting of Imran Khan in 2022, Shehbaz Sharif, Nawaz Sharif’s younger brother, was appointed the prime minister of a makeshift interim coalition government with Nawaz Sharif’s staunch allies in PML-N in key positions, for example, Rana Sanaullah, as the interior minister.
The interim government led by Shehbaz Sharif had a number of objectives: to remove Imran Khan from the country’s political scene, seek to rescind the imprisonment sentence, overturn Nawaz Sharif’s disqualification, and delay the general elections timeline until the safe return of Nawaz Sharif is secured.
Shehbaz Sharif’s administration pursued these objectives ruthlessly. Imran Khan was sentenced to a plethora of legal cases, of which a substantial number still remain pending, making his release almost impossible. Simultaneously, the law was passed to qualify Nawaz Sharif for the elections and applied in retrospect. This could only happen in Pakistan.
Nawaz Sharif,  in the first instance, should not have been allowed to leave the country. He should have been provided with the required medical care in Pakistan. After all, millions are receiving the medical healthcare that he himself helped to design. If it was good enough for millions, it should have been good enough for him.
Secondly, Nawaz Sharif, by going into voluntary exile or refusing to return to serve his imprisonment, became a fugitive of the law. On his return, he should have been taken into custody and given the right to plead his case. As a fugitive in custody, he should not have been allowed to address the media or a political rally in his support on grounds of prejudicing the case against him. Instead, he has returned to Pakistan with the ambition of becoming the prime minister of the country for the fourth time. His supporters claim that the cases against him and his prison sentence were politically motivated. That is exactly what the supporters of Imran Khan are saying. This entire sorry episode highlights the double standards of justice: one for the rich and elites and one for the ordinary, trodden citizens of Pakistan.

The author is a British citizen of Pakistani origin with a keen interest in Pakistani and international affairs.