Shehbaz Sharif, from under the shadow of Nawaz

A day before the first major act of defiance in his career, photographs of Shehbaz Sharif made the rounds; Punjab’s former chief minister in his trademark khaki safari suit visiting the families of his political party workers picked up by law-enforcement agencies, ostensibly in an attempt to stop them from taking to the streets.

These Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz supporters were expected to join a rally on July 13 welcoming the party’s former leader Nawaz Sharif and his daughter Maryam Nawaz as they returned from London to serve prison sentences in a case involving the family’s foreign properties.

Shehbaz was reaching out to ensure his men and women knew they had a leader —  albeit a new one —  to follow into the trenches, for the July 13 rally was the party’s first major act of resistance under the younger Sharif’s watch.

Shehbaz replaced his elder brother as the president of the party in March this year, after Nawaz was disqualified from holding political offices by the Supreme Court of Pakistan (SCP). The court has overseen Nawaz and his children’s trial in three corruption references, one of which ended with prison terms for the three-time prime minister, his daughter, and son-in-law.

A defiant politician is not the reputation Shehbaz carefully cultivated over the last decade. As the chief ministership of the country’s largest province, Shehbaz is more known as the strict administrator who keeps bureaucrats on their toes.

An elaborate public relations infrastructure has worked hard to craft this image. Shehbaz’s surprise raids of government facilities and his summary suspensions of officials apparently found negligent have been promptly flashed across media platforms by his very proactive PR team. Somewhere in the midst of his ‘action-man’ persona and the publicity generated around inaugurations of megaprojects, the more usual political references pop up —  Shehbaz gesturing animatedly during speeches and generously quoting revolutionary verses by leftist poet Habib Jalib.

Of all his bytes and photo-ops, the photographs which stand out the most are the ones during the wet and disastrous monsoon season every year. Pictures of Shehbaz are as seasonal as the rain in which he is seen navigating the flooded streets of Lahore, in the very same style of safari suit with long wellies.

Filling big brother’s shoes

With Nawaz in jail, Shehbaz found himself responsible for leading the party to national success on July 25. So the man in the wellies sloshing through the muck started fashioning himself into a national leader.

His speeches outside Punjab were laced with sentences in regional languages. The party’s social media team is now staffed with people with a command over some of the many languages Pakistanis speak, perhaps with a view to transforming Shehbaz into a man of all the people.

At a campaign event in Faisalabad on Friday – once a textile industrial hub – Shehbaz started his address with references to his achievements in the past 10 years and promised to turn the country into Turkey and Malaysia if his party was returned to power. 

As he paused for breath, the crowd which had been sweltering for a good six hours ahead of his arrival suddenly started chanting in a loop: "Wazir-e-Azam, Nawaz Sharif” (Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif).

Even the stage secretary, while waiting for Shehbaz’s entrance, repeatedly referred to him as the brother of the party’s leader or Quaid, a title formally bestowed upon Nawaz after he was disqualified.

This understanding of the elder Sharif as the charismatic leader and Shehbaz as the loyal younger brother who serves under Nawaz permeates a large segment of the PML-N rank and file. And this is a challenge Shehbaz must conquer. 

Irfan Siddiqui, Nawaz’s close aide who was on board the flight with the father-daughter duo on July 13, maintained Nawaz’s political importance within the party has not diminished in light of the Panama Papers judgement.

“Nawaz Sharif still has a hold on matters and the party understands the connection people have with him,” Siddiqui said.

Suhail Warraich, who serves as the executive director at Geo News and has covered PML-N for many years, said: “Shehbaz is a better manager or administrator than Nawaz, who is a better visionary.”

And while the two functions seemed at odds, Warraich felt they were two sides of the same coin. “One has been a visionary, the other an implementer but both have been successful,” he said.

“It is like a good cop-bad cop model but among themselves they have always managed to reach a compromise … and that is their working model.”

“The final word in the party still lies with Nawaz Sharif,” Warraich said. The situation is likely to change if Nawaz remains behind bars for long, which Warraich doubts is the case.

“There is no denying the emotional link the public has with Mian Nawaz Sharif but he has handed the party leadership to Shehbaz Sharif, and now, the crowds feel that connection through him," Siddiqui said. 

A passionate supporter at the Faisalabad rally translated the sentiment into words: “Nawaz Sharif lives in our hearts. He is the leader. Shehbaz follows his command.”

But this does not seem to be the case when it comes to how Shehbaz wants to be perceived on one matter integral to his survival in the future.

In a series of rallies held along the historic GT Road between Islamabad and Lahore, Nawaz and Maryam had dismissed their trial as meritless.

It was the powerful military establishment, they said, now aided by the top judiciary, punishing the Sharif family for challenging its de facto control over foreign and internal security policies of the country. 

They – not Shehbaz – introduced a hitherto unknown political narrative in the Punjabi heartland that has been the traditional support base of the military.

This narrative is glazed with euphemisms for the alleged extra-constitutional role of the armed forces who have repeatedly been referred to by Nawaz as aliens, and peppered with new slogans like “respect the vote.” 

While the elder Sharif and his daughter hurtle along a collision course with the judicial-military establishment, Shehbaz continues to exercise caution. 

In a media briefing during his campaign trail, he shot down a question about the establishment, saying he didn't know of any aliens. 

In another public appearance, he presented his political approach with even greater clarity when he said he wanted Pakistan to move towards reconciliation, a clear signal to the establishment that he was willing to collaborate. 

Veteran journalist Zahid Hussain maintained that most of the PML-N constituency politicians – part of a political machine running on patronage and interpersonal ties cultivated by the elder brother – subscribe to Shehbaz’s views on civil-military ties.

“PML-N politicians want status quo,” he said, referring to the 1999 ouster of Nawaz’s government in the military coup led by then-army chief Pervez Musharraf. “In 1999, 80 percent of the party joined the pro-military faction PML-Q,” Hussain said.

But others disagree with Hussain’s theory. They say the 1990s cannot be confused with the current political culture of Pakistan which is approaching the second successive transfer of power from one democratically-elected government to another. 

Journalist Raza Rumi, who heads Lahore-based newspaper Daily Times, argued there was not enough evidence to support the idea that PML-N politicians had dismissed Nawaz’s combative approach to the military establishment in favour of Shehbaz’s more neutral, even conciliatory tone.

For all their differences, the brothers do share an intimate bond. For Shehbaz, Nawaz is more than just a brother. 

When Nawaz’s offspring entered politics, many political observers noted that the move placed them in direct competition with Shehbaz’s son Hamza.

At a political gathering, Khan said the younger Sharif and his son Hamza, from Shehbaz’s first marriage with a cousin, had reason to celebrate Nawaz’s conviction.

This was shot down by Tehmina Durrani, whom Shehbaz married while the family was in exile following Musharraf’s coup. She called Khan’s remarks "baffling." Salman Ghani, the head of political affairs at Dunya News, a television channel, agreed. 

“There is a large degree of respect and regard when it comes to Shehbaz looking up to Nawaz Sharif,” he said. 

After three decades of covering the family and their politics, Ghani thought the family dynamic had simply no room for the brothers to engage in direct conflict. 

Mian Muhammad Sharif, the patriarch who set up the family’s business empire in Lahore after migrating from Amritsar, India during partition, ran the family as a tight-knit unit until his death in exile in 2004.

Since then, the mother Shamim Akhtar has headed the extended household based out of a vast estate in the suburbs of Lahore, named after the Sharifs’ native village Jati Umra in Amritsar.

The PML-N’s Facebook page showcases a series of photos of Shehbaz visiting his mother to seek her blessings before embarking on his July 13 rebellion.

But will Shehbaz remain respectfully under the shadow of his brother’s larger-than-life legacy or could the younger Sharif imagine branching out on his own altogether?

The litmus test

Shehbaz’s greatest test on the political mainstage after taking the mantle of party leader was to rally crowds across Lahore on July 13 to welcome his elder brother and niece in a public show of support. 

And thousands of workers did come out, but the city was in a state of lockdown. 

The caretaker government ordered shipping containers placed at major intersections to prevent people from proceeding – a tactic Shehbaz was familiar with as he used it during his tenure as the chief minister of Punjab to limit opposition parties. The huge crowds were then rendered invisible by a media blackout.

It all ended before Lahore’s international airport – the destination Shehbaz had set out for but the message was loud and clear; the people were standing by the Sharifs.

As Shehbaz presents himself as a national leader, he has several attributes that can appeal to voters outside Punjab, Ghani said.

For other provinces, infrastructural development, that of roads, flyovers, underpasses and metro buses, is a huge concern.

Ghani believed that Shehbaz’s recent campaign visit to Karachi was a success.

Voters in Pakistan’s biggest cosmopolitan city have long struggled without necessary infrastructure, without any of the mega infrastructure PML-N stands for, and see in him traits they have been looking for in successive chief ministers. 

But during the same Karachi campaign trail, the provincial leader inside Shehbaz stumbled into a controversy. 

His remark: “I will convert our paan-chewing brothers and sisters’ Kiranchi into Lahore” was condemned by many as insensitive and borderline racist.  

In a city with a large Urdu-speaking population, chewing betel leaf (paan) is a widespread social practice and Karachi residents did not take well to being mocked for their accents.

“Shehbaz Sharif may still be struggling with the role of being a national leader, whether he manages it successfully time will tell; but people are still looking towards Adiala jail [where Nawaz serves his prison term] for political inspiration,” Ghani said.