What is the PML-N promising?

After weeks of daily photos and videos of him attending what seemed to have been endless party huddles, PML-N chief Mian Nawaz Sharif finally made a proper public appearance in an election rally yesterday in Hafizabad. He says his mission in a possible fourth iteration as the country’s leader will be to put Pakistan back on its feet. Political observers had been wondering when Nawaz would make an appearance as his absence was being noticed by party stalwarts and opponents alike. His party leadership had been saying for months that Nawaz would be leading their election campaign but with less than three weeks left until the general elections, his MIA status was starting to generate what was entirely avoidable speculation, with even his opponents taking a dig at him for ‘hiding’. Observers say his own party members have been surprised that it has taken him this long to finally start the PML-N’s election campaign.

The question is: what is Nawaz offering to the people? Judging by yesterday’s speech, the answer seems to be ‘same old, same old’ – speak the same old rhetoric of development, add in a motorway or two, rue how life in pakistan would have been perfection had he been allowed to complete his five-year tenure as prime minister after his party came to power in 2013, and add a bit of a lament over how the PTI government ruined things. There you have the PML-N’s ‘narrative’. There is nothing new, no roadmap, no plan, no way to discern what the party will do that it has not done before to get us out of this quagmire of misery. Of course, the PML-N has a legitimate reason to think its development mantra works. To be fair, the party has performed better at basic governance than its rivals. So it would make sense to dwell on past glory, especially since the party’s strength has been ‘good governance’, delivery and development – Motorways, roads network, power plants, economy and infrastructure. Nawaz’s party is neither about legislation like the PPP or anti-corruption like the PTI. Its voters are also in some ways of similar persuasion. They vote because they want employment, they want less inflation, they want electricity, they want roads, they want prosperity. This is what Nawaz says he delivered when he was in power in 2013 – and in some ways he did deliver much of that. Of course, the elephant in the room Nawaz chooses to ignore: the 16 months of the PDM coalition government whose economic disaster the PML-N would rather we all forgot. But, while Nawaz may try to skip over it, the harsh reality is that it was his brother who was the PM and his handpicked finance czar Ishaq Dar who almost led the country to the brink of bankruptcy.

Running a whole campaign on the good old days had worked for most – and may work again for the PML-N to an extent, especially if he taps into the pre-2018 persecution tales. But the Pakistani voter is also tired of listening to promises that are never fulfilled. With the PTI’s bat symbol gone, many are seeing the race in Punjab as almost in the bag for the PML-N. If that is true, and if the PML-N voter does vote the party back to power, one wonders if Nawaz and co have learnt enough to at least not make the same mistakes all over again. Just a reminder to the party: a good indication of its seriousness regarding the elections and its promises would have been a manifesto – which is still MIA.