Nawaz Sharif, businessman, three-times Pakistan PM to banished leader, returns

Former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif upon being granted protective bail has finally returned to Pakistan on Saturday (Oct 21). Sharif's legal team filed a protective bail petition in the Islamabad High Court on Wednesday to restrain authorities from arresting himon his arrival.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo returned to Pakistan on October 21, ending his four-year-long self-imposed exile in the UK.

According to the petition, Nawaz was seeking protective bail in order to surrender before the court and “submit to due process of justice and avail remedies permissible under the law”.

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Pakistan’s politics has been going through its topsy-turvy phase yet again. With opposition party leader Imran Khan on tenterhooks and majority leader Shehbaz Sharif passing on the leadership to another temporary government, country’s analysts are looking at Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo Nawaz Sharif to come to the rescue.

Nawaz left the country in November 2019 for medical treatment in London following his conviction in a corruption case. The three-time prime minister has not returned since and faces multiple cases in Pakistan, as per Dawn’s report.

Nawaz Sharif: From businessman to Prime Minister to living in exile

After earning an LL.B. from the University of Punjab in Lahore, Sharif joined his family’s influential House of Ittefaq (Ittefaq Group), an industrial conglomerate with interests in sugar, steel, and textiles. He entered politics in 1981 as a member of a provincial council in Punjab.

He was first elected as Pakistan’s prime minister in October 1990. His election followed the dismissal of PM Benazir Bhutto by President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, who made use of a constitutional clause that gave him the authority to dismiss the elected government if he deemed that government to be corrupt or inefficient.

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In 199,3 Sharif too was dismissed on grounds similar to those for which Bhutto had been ushered out of office. Bhutto then succeeded him, and Sharif continued to be her vocal opponent. In the 1997 elections held after Bhutto’s next dismissal, Sharif returned to serve a second term as prime minister.

In the late 1990s, Pakistan’s economic situation continued to deteriorate and in 1998 Pakistan was nearing bankruptcy. Sharif was overthrown by Musharraf in a military coup d’état almost immediately and was subsequently tried on charges of hijacking and terrorism, for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

In 2000, having agreed to leave Pakistan for 10 years in exchange for having his jail sentence commuted, Sharif was released from prison and went into exile in Saudi Arabia.

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Sharif executed a remarkable political comeback in 2013, securing a third term as prime minister when the PML-N won a resounding victory in the May legislative elections. The victory was not without controversy, though. Rival Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, led by Imran Khan, denounced the elections as rigged and held protests in Islamabad for several months.

In 2017, Sharif’s third term as prime minister came to an end when he was forced to resign as a result of a corruption probe.

In July 2018, Nawaz Sharif was convicted in absentia of having owned assets beyond his income and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. His influential daughter Maryam Nawaz Sharif was convicted of having abetted a crime and was sentenced to 7 years in prison.

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A final blow to the PML-N government came about two weeks later when elections were held and Khan’s PTI party received the plurality of the vote. In October 2019, he was released on medical bail and left Pakistan weeks later.

Although absent from Pakistan, Sharif remained active in Pakistan’s politics. As elections approached in 2023, the chances of Nawaz Sharif’s return to office appeared increasingly favourable.

(With inputs from agencies)

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