FORMER prime minister Nawaz Sharif is being offered considerable counsel by critics, including journalists and analysts, about the way forward, with many holding forth about the repercussions of his decisions such as rallying support through his GT Road journey.

He is also being told not to raise his voice against the Supreme Court that has cut short his prime ministerial tenure; the verdict may also spell an end to his formal participation in politics as his disqualification means he can’t even hold his party position.

The critics offering Nawaz Sharif advice, now that they have the benefit of hindsight, fall in the category of diehard opponents, neutral-impartial observers (in a handful of cases) and a sprinkling of those sympathetic to him.

Are the former PM’s rallies and speeches follies he’ll live to regret, or is there no other option?

The dozens of TV channels, which claim they do news and current affairs, have spawned an ever greater number of analysts and pundits who enrich the viewers’ life each evening with their wisdom and depth of analysis.

And if asking questions, as exalted anchors, were not enough, once their own programmes are out of the way, or possibly on their off days, these electronic media stars appear as panellists on the programmes of their friends and colleagues of other TV channels including rivals.

In the unlikely event that neither a defence analyst (mostly a former senior military officer whose early ‘initiation’ in politics must surely qualify him as an authoritative political pundit), nor a (poorly qualified, given how many times his/her career’s usually been truncated) politician is available, there is always the patriotic or ‘investigative journalist’ to fall back on.

No, no. There wasn’t an omission. Isn’t it sane to save the best for the last? Yes, you’ve guessed it. When the rivals are threatening to steal a march on you in the ratings’ race you pick up the phone and call that Rawalpindi politician. The one who says he is close to GHQ’s heart and soul.

There. You have the winning formula. You get the ‘ratings’ and the consequential windfall in advertising revenue. Who am I or you, for that matter, to say that this shouldn’t be the case as it produces a cacophony of largely uninformed noises? It works for the upholders of truth and national unity.

In this sea of insanity, one can only salute the handful of real journalists who try each evening to swim against the tide and be sane, objective and professional by portraying the truth as it is — without seeing it through the prism of an institution or a political party or this vested interest or that.

This is a minority that one hopes is not doomed to failure and unemployment.

Then there is the largely ineffective newspaper columnist-analyst, pretty much redundant as the media consumers’ palate gets more and more attuned to the sensational and noisy verbal duels than some calm, step-back analysis.

Of course I am being pretentious. When your writing is leading to a dwindling number of readers, you can’t possibly blame yourself, can you? The fault must lie somewhere else. What better than a sad state of media to hang your own failures on?

So, what do I think of Nawaz Sharif’s rallies and speeches? Follies that he’ll live to regret, or a position his dilemma is forcing upon him so that he has no choice in the matter? For answers, one may not need to look beyond the PML-N leader’s key erstwhile lieutenant.

Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan has taken to speaking out about his leader’s faux pas that he blames on the advice the ousted prime minister received from a coterie of close advisers that excluded the former interior minister himself.

Although he said he’d been excluded from the decision-making circle around the prime minister some six weeks before the Supreme Court verdict, Chaudhry Nisar saw it fit to raise the issue publicly on the eve of the devastating judicial blow to Nawaz Sharif. Never before.

He continues to express unhappiness at the way the party is being run. He appears either to be positioning himself for an exit or to launch a challenge to Nawaz Sharif within the party with the desire to have the ‘N’ for Nawaz swapped for ‘N’ for Nisar in the PML-N.

The interior minister will say he was given carte blanche to run his ministry by the prime minister, despite serious concerns being expressed by many about how the National Action Plan (against terrorism) was being handled and implemented.

Yet, the prime minister rather foolishly, as he holds perceived personal loyalty above all else, kept Nisar in place. He even took the blame for the interior minister’s doings. One recalls, following the APS Peshawar massacre, how Sharif seemed ready to declare war on the terrorists but allowed himself to be persuaded by Nisar to try dialogue one last time and was justifiably slammed.

If a key lieutenant’s loyalties are wavering now that the boss is down, imagine how the opportunists in the PML-N ranks (and yes, PML-N has more than its fair share of them) must be straining at the leash to bolt.

Nawaz Sharif may perhaps be appealing directly to his mass support base, but not because he feels he has a realistic chance of being restored to the prime minister’s office. Surely, with nearly four decades of politics in one form or the other under his belt he is not that naive. He must feel the hostility of his powerful detractors is such that they may not stop at his disqualification alone. His party’s destruction and the fragmentation of his electoral support may be next. In such a situation, there can only be two responses. Flight may not be an option as he has nowhere to go. So, he has chosen to fight. Tell me what do you think?

The writer is a former editor of Dawn.

abbas.nasir@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, August 19th, 2017