Sharif’s endemic woes

Politics or entertainment?

There is never a dull moment in our deeply flawed political matrix. Endemic swipes of our political elite against each other, dutifully amplified 24/7 on the idiot box, keep the viewers duly entertained.

The ubiquitous talk shows on different news channels every evening further fortify the perception that this is mainstream entertainment and the rest is only peripheral. That is why it seems that politicians on both sides of the divide have to hone their skills to entertain.

Whether it is PTI’s Fawad Chaudhry or the PML-N’s Daniyal Aziz or for that matter Messrs Sheikh Rashid, Talal Choudhry or Babar Awan, they have to come up with a new one every evening. As a result, serious mainstream politicians also have to improvise to perennially come up with new material in order to be heard, and noticed too.

The PTI chief Imran Khan has lamented this trend claiming that he never engages in the personal and keeps his diatribes confined to the political. It is indeed ironical the Khan who can claim without any fear of contradiction that he is the father of this unsavoury trend is also complaining.

Nonetheless he has a valid point to make. But who will draw a line between the personal and the political? For example when the PTI chief alleges in his not too infrequent press conferences that Zardari has laundered billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money does he have any proof that can stand the scrutiny of the courts?

Similarly, Nawaz Sharif might be guilty as charged but as yet he has been only convicted and ousted for not declaring his iqama. On the flip side is the manner in which Jahangir Tareen is maligned by the PML-N stalwarts even before he is convicted of any wrongdoing including not declaring his agricultural income and assets abroad.

A senior PML-N politician the other day was discussing his relations with his family members in a media talk. Is this fair or, for that matter, kosher?

The growing social media is increasingly supplanting (in fact mostly leading) the old media in this mudslinging fest. All kinds of fake news, doctored pictures and videos are distributed with impunity on Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp.

The PML-N and the PTI have special cyber wings doing such hatchet jobs. Even the ever-present deep state is alleged to have powerful social media wings ostensibly to counter enemy propaganda.

Since most of the stuff on social media is unsourced anything that is posted on it is kosher. His opponents are specifically targeting Imran Khan a former playboy by his own admission. His past liaisons are being twisted to fit in the narrative of the fake news creators.

The other day the PPP co-chairperson Asif Ali Zardari mentioned the so-called ‘me too movement’, while addressing his party men in Lahore. The movement refers to hundreds of women who were sexually harassed, groped or raped by the celebrity (now disgraced) Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.

Zardari sahib was paying in kind to the Khan who on his recent Sindh trip did not hold any punches painting the PPP chief as corrupt and a ruthless fiend. The PTI has even claimed that Benazir Bhutto’s handwritten will that gave her husband the legitimacy to be her political heir as fake.

Zardari shared the document with me soon after his wife’s demise when I went to condole with him at his Naudero abode. Being familiar with Ms Bhutto’s handwriting I vouchsafed at the time that it was a genuine document and still maintain that it is. Nevertheless, Zardari should remain above the fray by not paying the Khan in the same coin.

The former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s daughter and designated political heir Maryam Safdar, unlike her father, is attending NAB hearings along with her husband Captain (r) Safdar. They along with her brothers are charged as being beneficial owners of Sharif family’s London properties.

While making an unexpected stopover in Jeddah on the pretext of meeting his mother, Sharif extended his stay in Saudi Arabia. Ostensibly he is waiting to see some important members of the royal family.

Gone are the days that even while in the opposition Sharifs were given the red-carpet treatment in the kingdom. The new royalty does not view things the same way. In fact, they are reportedly annoyed with the former prime minister that he procrastinated — albeit for the right reasons — to pledge Pakistan’s unqualified support for the so-called Islamic army to rout the Houthi rebels from Yemen.

The NAB court in Sharif’s absence not only refused to grant him exemption from personal appearance but also issued bailable warrants for his arrest. Thereby the hardliner Maryam, albeit composed outside the courtroom, termed the whole process as not ehtesab (accountability) but intaqam (vendetta).

This has become her father’s oft-repeated mantra as well. The other evening Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi suddenly dashed to Lahore to confer with the Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif. He wants the younger Sharif to dissuade his elder brother from taking a hard line against the military and the courts.

It is also heartening to note that Abbasi has started to assert himself. It’s a relief that he is neither a robot nor a rubber stamp as the enigmatic Sheikh Rashid claims that he is.

Nawaz Sharif might have a genuine grouse, in the manner that he has been ousted. The other day one of his stalwarts, Minister of State for Interior Affairs Talal Chaudhry, put it quite succulently that those who are elected by the people are not allowed to rule.

According to Chaudhry the PML-N would rather prefer to sit in the opposition to struggle for civilian supremacy. These are noble thoughts.

But the PML-N is neither a revolutionary party nor a party of resistance. The rump can only survive while in power.

That is why there are rumblings within the ruling party to look for greener pastures if the elder Sharif insists on playing the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Perhaps his younger brother will soon travel to Jeddah or London to plead with him not to throw the baby with the bath water.

No doubt the elder Sharif wants his daughter to succeed him as prime minister. But that now, owing to Sharif family’s legal woes, seems like a pie in the sky.

Maryam has a future in politics. She is bright, charismatic and tenacious. But certainly, now is not that time. Perhaps the family should be showing a semblance of unity in this hour of adversity rather than bickering over spoils amongst themselves.