Nawaz Sharif has said he will return from London to Pakistan shortly to rouse his supporters and lead the PMLN in the general elections on 25th July. There is no reason to doubt his word because his resistance has not wavered since he was ousted from power.

The problem is that the NAB court is set to announce its judgment in the money laundering cases against Nawaz and Mariam and Safdar on Friday 6 July. Since the judgment is a foregone conclusion because of the powerful civil-military-judicial forces arrayed against him – they haven’t thrown him out, decisively pre-rigged the elections and hounded him from pillar to post only to let him off the hook at the most critical juncture – the timing of his return assumes great significance. But Nawaz’s dilemma is unenviable.

If he leaves his ailing wife in hospital to return to Pakistan and be in court on Friday 6th to hear the verdict to handcuff and shunt him into prison, he will not be by her bedside should there be a mishap. His political loss would then be compounded by the bitter pain of his personal tragedy. But if he stays back in London for her sake, his critics will accuse him of political cowardice to avoid going to prison – they are already accusing him of feigning the illness of his wife to gain popular sympathy! More critically, his party supporters will be disheartened and the PMLN’s election campaign will falter. So, what is he likely to do?

According to latest reports, Begum Kulsoom is expected to recover soon. Therefore Nawaz wants to stay on for a bit and has petitioned the NAB court to hold off announcing the verdict for another week on the assurance that he would present himself in court at that time. Should he break his pledge to the court, he will lose much ground politically. But if he is there on the appointed hour and day in the court to face the music, he will regain his goodwill. If the court accepts his petition, well and good. But if it rejects his petition on 6th July and holds him guilty as charged, Nawaz will then have to decide whether to return to Pakistan and go straight to prison or hunker down to a long exile in London as a “fugative from justice”. If he exercises the first option, he could expect to strengthen his narrative of heroic resistance to victimhood while battling in the higher courts for bail during his appeals. But if he chooses the second path of personal safety first, his opponents will have a field day wounding his party in the run-up to election day. Can a crop of recent voter surveys help him decide his fate?

Three surveys have now seen the light of print. Regardless of their scope, accuracy or bias, they show the PMLN in a leading position nationally, while one puts the PTI marginally ahead. But all three show the PMLN leading by an average of 15% over the PTI in the critical province of Punjab. More significantly, though, all show that the PTI is gaining ground (never mind the Aliens who are whipping up this trend by shunting “electable” PMLN MNAs into the PTI camp). Indeed, if this trend continues in the next three weeks, then the PMLN’s smugness will be wiped off its Punjabi face.

In this sense, therefore, Nawaz Sharif really doesn’t have much choice in deciding his course of action. Come hell or high water, he must return to Pakistan to stand up and be counted even if he is temporarily shackled. But he should draw comfort from some counter-developments. The print and electronic media is beginning to gnaw at its muzzle and whimpering warnings of pre-election rigging. The social media is bolder in confronting the trolls. Never in Pakistan’s history has the civil-military establishment been portrayed in such poor light. There are loud whispers too of developing cracks in the judiciary led by a do-gooding chief justice whose noble intentions have become snarled in a web of controversial statements and gestures.

It is a small miracle that Nawaz Sharif and Mariam have defied the ubiquitous and omnipotent Miltablishment to stand their ground and retain the bulk of their support base in Punjab. It is also unprecedented that any politician has had the nerve to challenge its naked hegemony. Indeed, if Nawaz had simply wanted to rule as prime minister and make more money while in government, he wouldn’t have challenged the Miltablishment in the first place and he wouldn’t have been on the mat today. This is the opposite of what Imran Khan is doing. Having posed as an anti-status-quo crusader for justice and accountability, Imran has embraced all the vested-interests of Pakistan which are part of the problem and not the solution.

The 1970 and 1977 elections are tragic watersheds in Pakistan’s history. The selections later this month threaten to rattle the fragile constitutionalism of this hapless country.