Justice or vengeance?

• Nawaz Sharif’s latest fiery sermon on courts

 A character in one of John Steinbeck’s novels remarks, ‘God, I hate a man that deceives himself’. Another reason that for the disqualified PM’s airy bravado, lies in human nature which stubbornly insists on one’s own innocence, or that one’s case is special, and which refuses to admit any wrong, even if one has to blame the whole world and high heaven itself. Of course, the cause also might be the ex-PM’s newly acquired liberal ideological bent, after spending a lifetime hobnobbing with the military and ultra-conservatives elements, about whom latter it is said: ‘In your heart you know they’re right — far right’! But the simplest reason for his somersault as knightly defender of all that is pristine in our society, our politics and particularly the judiciary, can be summed up in one word: desperation, as also selective memory.

By rejecting the July 28 SC judgment and instead railing against his adjudicators or else blaming unnamed but behind the scene forces for his downfall, he has plunged the country into a never-ending crisis, which has resulted in an all-pervasive feeling of gloom and doom among the people. In his latest London (being inexplicably excluded from the Exit Control List) tirade, the ex-PM again turned his blazing guns on the five judges who had tried him, calling their decision ruinous for the country, the references filed against him an act of revenge, and railed against some people for ‘spreading darkness’, and the use of sit-in Dharna culture to wrest political gains. His demand for reports of all previous commissions and tribunals to be made public carries weight, but is untimely and merely distracting at this juncture.

Disturbingly, he has also roped in that evergreen ‘rebel’ Javed Hashmi, now his fervent defender, noted for his anti-establishment and anti-judiciary rants, in his campaign targeting the apex court, which under the existing volatile circumstances, would be adding fuel to the fire. Nawaz Sharif should realise that the ‘truth is seldom pure and never simple’, avoid confrontation, and let his high-powered battery of lawyers do all the talking. And heed the voices of reason, not of hardliners.