Daily Times

Sir: Ever since Nawaz Sharif was barred from office, he has been very vocal about the forces that have led to his disqualification.

When the court handed out their judgment in the Avenfield case, many of his supporters joined in, claiming that some outside faction was to be blamed for the current situation Sharif finds himself in. The PPP had initially stayed silent on this topic, yet when Asif Ali Zardari, and his sister, Faryal Talpur were also indicted in a large scale corruption case, and their names were placed on the Exit Control List, they too alluded to a hidden power that was actually pulling the strings behind the scenes in Pakistan.

Similarly, at different times over the past few months, many large scale media houses in the country were censored due to their reports on the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement. All of this was also blamed on unnamed forces that were actually driving the policy decisions in Pakistan, and according to some, was even behind the recent aggressive approach of the Supreme Court and primarily Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Mian Saqib Nisar.

However, there is one major entity in Pakistan that seems to have been undisturbed by these covert forces. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf has so far remained immune to the institutions lurking in the shadows and in fact, they have the most to gain from these stealthy political maneuverings. Such is the level of intrusion by these clandestine factions that Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui, of the Islamabad High Court, had to go on record and ask General Bajwa to stop the military, especially its spy agencies, from acting outside their constitutional bounds. Whether his request/warning is heeded remains to be seen.

SHEHRYAR BILAL

Lahore

Published in Daily Times, July 20^th 2018.