Glossary: Pakistan Muslim League

Definition: The Pakistan Muslim League, or PML, is a collective of generally right-wing, conservative, Islamic Pakistani political parties erratically linked to the country's military and clerical establishment. The largest of the PML parties, and essentially the only one among them to wield power on the Pakistani political scene, is that headed by Nawaz Sharif, hence its acronym: PML-N.

Less inclined to corruption than the Pakistan Peoples Party, its main rival, the PML is more inclined to imperious, arbitrary and anti-western (and particularly anti-American) rule than the PPP.

The Pakistan Muslim League was founded in 1962 to succeed the Muslim League party that had been forcibly disbanded in 1958 when the military dictatorship of Muhammad Ayub Khan came grabbed power and banned all political parties.

Since the early 1990s, the PML has been alternately dominant and marginal on Pakistan's political scene, usually depending on Sharif's place in popular or military esteem. In the February 2008 parliamentary elections, the PML polled the second-largest block of votes (behind the Bhuttos' Pakistan Peoples Party, winning 71 elected seats and 91 overall in the 336-seat assembly. (Of the assembly's 336 members, 272 are elected. The rest are appointed proportionately to represent women and minorities.)