THERE was a time politicians used to make impulsive statements and when these later looked like backfiring they just issued a denial. Of course, the blame for ‘misreporting’ would be dumped on the usual suspect, the print journalist.

Who would have bothered to read the reporter’s notes, demonstrating where the pearls of wisdom originated? Today, speaking (or is it shooting?) from the hip is a far more hazardous exercise. Words are not just taken down in shorthand or long hand. They are recorded digitally.

TV channels our politicians have been so fond of appearing on and, helping boost the ratings of, by demeaning themselves and losing their dignity somewhere along the magical 60 minutes (interrupted of course by up to 22 minutes of advertisements), maintain archives of all output.

Seven to eleven every evening the nation has sat spellbound in front of the idiot box as many anchors have goaded and cajoled politicians of one hue or another to have a shouting match but, admittedly, in most cases stopped them short of a physical exchange of blows. Occasionally, they have failed.

There have been instances of studio guests jumping to their feet and throwing pieces of crockery or even a punch at the person holding the opposing view. It seems frothing-at-the-mouth politicians bring a huge cheer (and ad revenue) to the ratings-obsessed channel owners and their on-screen minions.

Our errant friends in the visual media will have to atone for their sins one day but at least in the short-term they believe they have profited from the madness they have contributed to. How have the politicians, the centrepieces in this TV ‘infotainment’ called ‘talk show’, fared?

Politics is the art of the possible, Bismarck remarked more than a century and a quarter ago. So why should we be surprised that the PPP has formed an alliance with the PML-Q and the MQM has left the government to join the PML-N on the opposition benches?

Well simply because the instantly recallable digital archive that many a TV channel has played on a virtual loop in recent weeks/months doesn’t let us forget the esteem in which the various political adversaries have held each other till suddenly changing their minds.

In the run-up to this year’s budget, when the PPP realised that its wafer-thin majority may have been eroded to a point where it would struggle to have enough numbers to get the finance bill passed, it turned to the PML-Q.

Yes, a party the PPP had consistently addressed as Qatil league, following the assassination of its leader Benazir Bhutto in the winter of 2007. TV channels had a field day running and re-running Asif Ali Zardari’s Qatil league statement.

Against the backdrop of the Islamabad Club meeting between the PML-N and MQM earlier this week, it would be equally difficult to count the number of occasions one has heard (recordings of) the leaders of both the parties castigating each other in the strongest of terms.

Each has targeted the politics of the other such as Nawaz Sharif questioning MQM’s ‘terrorism’ in the strongest of words and vowing never to have an alliance with Muttahida and Haider Abbas Rizvi slamming Sharif for having been nurtured ‘in the lap of dictatorship’.

But one of MQM’s leading lights, the curly-haired, tall and lanky Waseem Akhtar, who needs to enrol in an anger-management course as soon as he can, must get an award for the ultimate gem: “Dekhye yehganjay London baal lagwanay jaatay hein….

(Look,these baldies go to London for hair transplants.…)”

When the PML-N and MQM negotiators emerged from Islamabad Club and briefly talked to the media to announce their desire for a grand alliance Waseem Akhtar was among them. It isn’t clear whether the tall leader was trying to stay in the frame or hanging his head in shame.

There is some good to be had from this coverage. Over the recent weeks when this new alignment and realignment of political forces has been taking place, some politicians invited to talk shows have at least appeared embarrassed when their own statements were replayed.

Like the rest of us, politicians are also on a steep learning curve, having lived in the long shadow of dictatorship where only parasites grow. If there is contrition it is a sign of growing maturity and nothing to be ashamed of.

It would be a shame though if the recent political realignments and the excitement they have generated push into oblivion the lively media debate about the role of the armed forces and their intelligence agencies in everyday national life.

Whether it is the Abbottabad debacle or journalist Saleem Shahzad’s murder, commissions of inquiry headed by respected judges of the Supreme Court will, hopefully, unveil the truth soon. But this makes it incumbent on us to continue to discuss and debate where and how we wish to get to.

As a recent series of reports by this newspaper on turmoil in Balochistan demonstrated there is still a gulf between the perceptions of the civilian and military leaders about the shortcomings of the other. As is uncertainty about who is in charge.

While no doubt the civilian governments at the centre and the provinces need to up their game and perhaps even to reorient themselves, the army too must shed its historical and customary sense of superiority. For, it is this sense and contempt for all other points of view that have brought us to the verge of abject failure.

Debate, openness, plurality may pull us back from the abyss as they generate and represent fresh ideas, solutions. Any other formula of the sort favoured by the guardians of our ideological and territorial frontiers in the past will tip us over.

The writer is a former editor of Dawn.

abbas.nasir@hotmail.com