Motorcyclists drive past welcoming banners for Pakistan’s self-exiled former PM Nawaz Sharif, installed along a highway in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, on October 19, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AP

A Pakistan court granted bail Thursday to former prime minister and graft convict Nawaz Sharif, removing the threat of arrest when he returns to the country from self-imposed exile this weekend, his lawyer said.

After nearly four years in the United Kingdom, Sharif is hoping to lead his Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party through elections scheduled for January 2024.

The court’s decision allows him to return to his political heartland of Lahore on Saturday for a welcome home rally, while his primary opponent Imran Khan languishes in jail.

“It’s a new beginning,” PML-N chairman Raja Muhammad Zafar-ul-Haq told AFP. “His return is poised to be a momentous development.”

Sharif’s lawyer Amjad Pervaiz told AFP the Islamabad High Court granted him protective bail until October 24 meaning “he can not be arrested on his arrival” in Pakistan.

Sharif has been prime minister three times but was ousted in 2017 and given a lifetime disqualification from politics after being convicted of corruption.

He served less than a year of a seven-year sentence before getting permission to seek medical care in the United Kingdom, ignoring subsequent court orders to return during former prime minister Imran Khan’s government.

Politicians in Pakistan are often tangled in legal proceedings that rights monitors say are orchestrated by the powerful military, which has ruled the country directly for more than half of its history and continues to enjoy immense power.

Nawaz’s fortunes changed when his brother Shehbaz Sharif came to power last year and his government oversaw changes to the law, including limiting the disqualification of lawmakers from contesting elections to five years.

Sharif’s return has likely been smoothed by a deal between the military establishment and his party to prevent significant legal hurdles, said analyst Zahid Hussain.

“There was some sort of arrangement with the military establishment, without that he wouldn’t have decided to come back,” he told AFP.

The caretaker government — in place until elections — has previously denied any such agreement.

The PML-N party, one of the two dynastic parties of the country that frequently swap power, is planning a massive rally through the streets of Lahore on Saturday.

The PML-N has touted Sharif as a safe pair of hands to steer a spiralling economy suffering from rampant inflation.

But analyst Hussain said “it’s challenging to definitively determine whether his popularity remains intact”.

“His foremost challenge lies in building party credibility, especially in light of the substantial support Imran Khan has garnered, primarily from the youth,” he added.

“He will need to undertake a process of reinvention.”

Even though he was outside the country, Sharif was widely believed to have been pulling the strings of his brother’s premiership.

Known as the “Lion of Punjab”, he is a political survivor who has repeatedly roared back to the country’s top office.

He has served three terms — but did not complete any of them.

His first, beginning in 1990, ended in 1993 when he was sacked for corruption. The second lasted from 1997 to 1999, when he was deposed in a military coup.

He blamed the security establishment for again targeting him in 2017, when the Supreme Court disqualified him from politics for life over graft allegations he denies.

Prior to his return, he has tempered his anti-army stance.