Daily Times

Nawaz Sharif is a man who knows how to work the crowds. As he should, given that he has been doing so for more than 30 years. Yet what is relatively new is his increasing reliance on the media as an occupational prop. This has coincided with the unravelling of his political career and has plunged him into much hot water along the way.

And it is what those at the helm possibly wish to avoid. That is, a repetition of the media circus that kept the country captivated last summer and in which the elder Sharif proved himself a confident ringmaster. Never mind the potential consequences for a free and fair trial. Not when the thrice-elected Prime Minister and all his (wo)men decried the entire process as being flawed from the start.

Thus keeping Nawaz under lock and key and denying his supporters access to him is crucial to his defeat. Which is why his remaining trials and appeals will be carried out from behind prison walls. Meaning no open court. It remains to be seen whether proceedings will be conducted in-camera. Apparently, this has to happen in the interests of fairness and transparency. Not to mention if the need for witness statements arises. But more than anything, consider this: how paradoxical that the final stages of the trial of the century — one that has been touted as marking democracy’s triumph — may not take place in the absence of the fourth estate assuming its rightful role of silent witness.

To be clear, the PMLN supremo has, in many ways, put the establishment on the back-foot. For in returning to face the music he has done the unthinkable. Naturally, there has been talk of a scripted deal of some sort waiting to be sealed. Or else, so logic suggests, he would not have been so ready to come back and confront the very courts he felt had wronged him the first time around. But, then, Nawaz is also a man used to getting his way. Except when he does not. And when that happens — he merely changes course. Thus when it became certain that there was no hope of clawing his way back up the political ladder, he reinvented himself as the first self-proclaimed martyr of democracy; a veritable symbol of resilience in front of khaki power.

It is this last point that is perhaps the most important of all. Those who run the show fear this defiance that has suddenly become bigger than both man and party. For today, the PMLN chief takes the credit for having single-handedly, if unwittingly, unmasked the ambitions of the establishment. One that would not rest until the King was dethroned. While, similarly, not holding back when it came to unleashing a campaign to ‘tame’ the media; or better put, gag all those who refused to bow down before the red line of officialdom and its unreasonable diktats. More recently, there is the un-small matter of hundreds of PMLN workers across the Punjab being unlawfully detained; a virtual mainstream media blackout of the elder Sharif’s moment of return; a provincial capital in temporary lockdown; and communication networks jammed for the best part of an entire day. All in the name of security.

This should tell anyone everything they need to know about just who wears the crown.  *

Published in Daily Times, July 15^th 2018.