Nawaz Sharif set to return as Pakistani PM, will Imran Khan join government?

Nawaz Sharif expects to be Pakistan‘s prime minister for the third time after claiming victory in Saturday’s general election. The tsunami of support predicted by former cricket captain Imran Khan for his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) failed to materialise but the party will probably be the second party in the National Assembly.

PML-N supporters celebrate victory at Nawaz Sharif's HQ on Saturday night Tony Cross/RFI

Supporters of Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N were in a state of euphoria on Saturday night as early results came through, chanting and dancing at the party headquarters, which is also one of the Sharif family’s homes.

Flanked by his brother, outgoing Punjab chief minister Shahbaz, and his daughter, Maryam, Sharif addressed the ecstatic crowd from the house’s balcony, telling them he expected to be back in government soon.

Sharif was kicked out of power in 1999 when army Chief of Staff Pervez Musharraf seized power and jailed him for supposedly plotting the general’s murder, later accepting a deal which led to Sharif going into exile.

He repeated his wish to avoid a coalition but appealed to other parties to work with him to solve Pakistan’s huge economic problems, leaving the door open to coalition negotiations in the likely event of the PML-N not having an absolute majority.

PML-N supporters were in a state of euphoria at the party headquarters. Tony Cross/RFI

Parties need 172 seats to form a government alone.

While PML-N activists were in a state of political ecstasy early Sunday morning, PTI supporters were plunged into gloom.

Their party has only ever held one seat in the National Assembly, when Imran Khan was elected in 2002, and they had none in the previous parliament, having boycotted the 2008 poll.

A rise from zero to about 35 seats would delight most politicians but the PTI had built up such high expectations, especially among young, middle-class supporters, that on Saturday evening activists were experiencing the hangover without having had the party.

The bitterness was all the more acute since they have convinced themselves that Imran Khan and his comrades are the only honest politicians in the country, so the swing to Sharif seems to be a return to the old regime with a new party symbol.

Already PTI members have accused Sharif’s supporters in Lahore and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement in Karachi of electoral fraud and more such charges can be expected.

The PTI can console itself with the likelihood that it will lead the provincial government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the Pashtun-majority region in the north-west of the country, but even that may not be all good news.

Khan has promised to end US drone strikes in the province and the semi-autonomous tribal areas, which will put the PTI on a collision course with the world’s only superpower and, probably, the federal government.

And Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is racked by violence, which may lead Khan, who has been accused of being soft on the Taliban, having to make an unwelcome choice as to whose side he is on in the fundamentalist war on ordinary Pakistanis.

People’s Party (PPP) supporters had most reason to be depressed but then they knew what was coming.

From 14 seats in the previous parliament early results show them at 32-35, a humiliation for the party that led the previous government and still claims to bear the mantle of political idols Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the country’s first civilian prime minister, and his daughter, Benazir, also an ex-prime minister, who was assassinated in 2007.

Its record in government was judged so poor by most voters that it didn’t even get credit for the remarkable achievement of serving its entire term without being toppled by the military.

Sharif now faces a political headache and Khan his first decisive political test.

During the election campaign the PTI leader said that he would never work with either of the big establishment parties, although he was tougher on the PPP and its allies in the outgoing government.

Sharif will try to persuade him to forget that pledge or he will be forced to form a coalition with other parties, even the PPP.

If the PTI joins the government, it risks discredit in the eyes of its supporters for jumping into bed with the enemy and being tainted in the eyes of the electorate with the government’s failures, assuming, as one reasonably can, that solve a substantial number of Pakistan’s considerable problems.

If it stays outside, the established parties will no doubt accuse it of being frightened of taking on responsibility and continue to taunt its members over their political inexperience.

But that’s politics, as the PTI’s brand new MPs are about to find out.