AFTER a week-long lull, the leaks have started again. Two new recordings surfaced on social media on Friday, allegedly featuring former prime minister Imran Khan’s private conversations regarding his government’s “numbers” in parliament as well as his party’s strategy on the ‘Cablegate’ affair.

In the first recording, released in the afternoon, a person said to be the PTI chairman expresses his concern to an unidentified person or persons over not having enough votes to win the “numbers game” and saying he is making moves he “cannot disclose in public”. The same recording also includes a statement that has been perceived as Mr Khan claiming to have bought five votes while urging that his party should do “whatever it takes” to swing more.

The second recording, which surfaced late in the evening, allegedly features PTI bigwigs Shireen Mazari and Asad Umar discussing with Mr Khan how the party would play with the Cablegate cipher. They plan to brand those who might vote against the PTI chief as ‘Mir Jafars’ and ‘Mir Sadiqs’. The leaders discuss support for their narrative, while the voice allegedly belonging to Mr Khan says the public should be “spoon-fed” the party’s line “as their minds are fertile”.

Reacting to the first leak, Imran Khan, while addressing an afternoon jalsa in Mianwali, accused PML-N vice president Maryam Nawaz of creating ‘deepfake’ audios, calling it “her party’s speciality”. He also claimed that some ‘deepfake’ videos might surface soon, and warned that his party could create such audio and videos too if it wanted. Whatever the case may be, it is worth noting that though they may have given people something to talk about, nothing in any of the audios leaked so far will cause anyone — either from the PML-N or PTI — any permanent damage. They may have caused some embarrassment to a few people, but that is about it. Which brings us to the question: if whoever is ‘leaking’ these audios has enough material that they can cherry-pick bits just to embarrass Mr Khan, why are they not going for the jugular? Is this blackmail or death by a thousand cuts?

Soon after yesterday’s drama began, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah made the announcement that an investigation into the PM Office’s security had found that no foreign or local intelligence agency was involved in the leaks. Instead, he claimed, the recordings might have been the work of individuals or hackers snooping in on phone conversations.

The interior minister should realise that sounds more like a shoddy cover-up than a plausible explanation for how two sitting Pakistani prime ministers ended up being illegally surveilled and having their private dealings leaked to the public. Are our security agencies so hapless and inept that they couldn’t prevent some ‘hackers’ from breaching the PM Office’s security? Quite embarrassing if true.

Published in Dawn, October 8th, 2022