PML-N

The Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) is a centre-right conservative party in Pakistan. The party was recently in power until the appointment of an interim government led by Nasirul Mulk for the previous general election. It was led by the thrice-elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, until he was disqualified for contempt of the Supreme Court in 2017. The party’s platform is generally conservative, which involves supporting free market capitalism, opposing military power, supporting democratic ideals, and being generally anti-censorship on an online and wilderness platform.

Since its foundation by General Zia ul Haq, PML-N, along with the People’s Party, has dominated the two-party political system of Pakistan. However, after the 1999 coup, the party was eclipsed by its own splinter faction, the Musharraf – backed Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid), for almost a decade. PML-N regained popularity in the 2008 general elections, when it was elected as the principal opposition party.

During its election campaign for the 2013 general elections, the party competed against its arch-rival, the PPP, and another centrist party, the PTI. In an unofficial count, the party secured the qualified majority in the state parliament, the Punjab Assembly, and the Balochistan Assembly; it is yet the only party to have secured respectable seats and representation on provisional assemblies of Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The leader of PML-N, Nawaz Sharif, won a third term as Prime Minister of Pakistan, the first time this had happened in the history of the country.