Daily Times

People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked. The man who lies to the world is the world’s slave from then on. There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and the white lie is the blackest of all — Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

It was depressing to watch a sequence of tweets: from the one by the DG ISPR rejecting the government notification as “incomplete and not being in line with the recommendations of the enquiry board” to a gory sequence from the lady-in-waiting to be the queen: “Panama is crap. Trashed in the rest of the world”. She followed it with a classic one saying that “Panama papers were never about corruption. Even the stealers and hackers didn’t say it was”.

Frederik Obermaier, the Pulitzer award-winning investigative journalist and the co-author of Panama Papers, gave the lady-in-waiting a humble lesson in honesty: “Trashed in the rest of the world? ICYMI: 150 investigations, audits and investigations #PanamaPapers in 80 countries”. The lady responded by blocking him!

The tweet by the DG ISPR reflected an apparent exhaustion of patience on an issue which has lingered on the sidelines. It is now a foregone conclusion that the mechanism necessitating this madness was meant to save the real culprit/s by sacrificing a few dispensable pawns.

It also brought the schism between the civilian and the military leadership in the open for a trillionth time which elicited a spate of statements from all and sundry on the government side including the interior minister who has a nagging penchant for haranguing meaninglessly. In the end, and in spite of countless words spoken, there was nothing really said. Such is the bankruptcy of the ruling elite’s thinking and such is the web of deceit they so treacherously weave whenever they are confronted with a challenge.

Like so much else in the past, should this matter also be allowed to rest with the real culprit/s escaping the clutches of the enquiry, and relatively irrelevant people dragged in the line of the fire to pay the price for someone else’s over-exuberant indulgence?

On the face of it, that’s the way it looks it will be. The interior minister rubbished the executive order circulated by the Prime Minister’s Office saying that it is his ministry that will issue the appropriate notification. Nothing is out yet.

If this were to be the ultimate outcome, what purpose did the DG ISPR tweet serve? Just bring the proverbial civil-military divide in the open again? Who stands to gain from this stratagem?

Let’s look at it from a different perspective. The tweet was not just a belittling affront to the government. It clearly had a ‘rebellious’ streak to it, putting the government flat on the mat, badly denting its writ and authority.

Under the circumstances, a government interested in preserving its right to rule had two clear options to choose from: send the army chief packing, or pack up and go home itself. Uncaring of any shade of morality curtailing its despotic disposition, the government appears to be doing none of the two.

There are no two opinions that, post the Panama judgment by the Supreme Court (SC) and the dubious handling of the Dawn Leaks enquiry, Nawaz Sharif has lost the moral base to remain in power. He may also lose the legal base soon. Is that pressure enough for the likes of him to call it a day for now, and live to fight later?

Unfortunately, the political elite have had no schooling in the components of credibility and accountability constituting a cardinal foundation for ruling. They are prone to trashing away any such suggestion as their battalions of foot-soldiers go into an overdrive lecturing in the norms of democracy and stressing that they have been elected by the people and only they can send them home. In the interim, they rule by their oligarchic whims and fancies and, using the same contrived mandate, continue indulging nonchalantly in unabated loot and plunder.

But the DG ISPR tweet has also exposed the military to a host of damaging prospects. The act brought a divide out in the open which can be better addressed away from public glare. Also, a caustic tweet of this kind, if unheeded, will be perceived to imply a ready willingness to resort to the ultimate.

If the government gives in to the not-so-veiled threat by exposing the real culprit/s and motives, thus jeopardising the prime minister’s much-hyped succession plan, the army can sit back basking in the sunshine of its enhanced power.

But, if the government continues to indulge its ambivalence, as it appears it will, or resorts to another cover-up strategy, how will the military proceed from there on? Will it back off by staying quiet, thus taking a lot of shine off its avowed authority, or will it take the fight a notch further and, if so, what does such confrontation portend for the civil-military relations in the future? And, inevitably, how, when and where will the military strike? Will it initiate an enquiry of its own and proceed to spill the beans?

As to the desperation of the lady-in-waiting wishing the Panama controversy to just evaporate into thin air, all one can say is that resorting to blatant lying and vile acts of distorting reality do not chisel a way out. Such Machiavellian manoeuvres will paste further muck on the faces of the Sharifs which have already been rendered virtually unrecognisable.

The controversy also reflects the evolving military mindset and the lowly stock of the political leadership that waits on the sidelines to take over when the older generation resigns to the lust of the younger echelons within their putrid family oligarchies.

The writer is a political and security strategist, and heads the Regional Peace Institute — an Islamabad-based think tank. Email: raoofhasan@hotmail.com. Twitter: @RaoofHasan