PML-N leader Javed Latif’s controversial statement, that should something happen to Maryam Nawazy “we (the party) won’t raise the Pakistan Khappay (we want Pakistan) slogan”, has caused outrage among the public; and very rightly so. His remarks came a day after former three-time prime minister and PML-N ‘Quaid’ Nawaz Sharif said Maryam’s life was in danger since she was receiving threats and that he would hold the military leadership directly responsible if anything happened to her.
Going by Latif’s statement it seems PML-N is pretty sure that Nawaz Sharif based his assertion on certain facts or evidence, but unless the same is forthcoming sometime soon the former prime minister’s accusations can, for all intents and purposes, be only taken as a political gambit meant to grab the initiative in an otherwise desperate situation.
But it doesn’t seem to have had the intended effect beyond the tame party base. Increasingly people are not just finding it in bad taste, especially the Javed Latif kind of reaction to it, but some people believe that PML-N has repeatedly crossed the red line when it comes to insulting state institutions and this time it has just gone too far.
Ever since Nawaz’s unceremonious exit from the prime minister’s office not long after the last general election PML-N seems to have made a habit of attacking important pillars of the state whenever it is pushed into a corner. Surely nobody has forgotten former national assembly speaker Ayaz Sadiq’s rather unsavoury comments about the so-called Abhinandan incident. When he said that the PTI government let the captured Indian pilot go so quickly because it “feared an attack from India” he very clearly distorted facts to win brownie points in a slugfest of a very domestic nature. And he, too, failed to win any sort of public sympathy. This was, however, not the only incident in which a senior PML-N leader responded to an unforeseen situation by putting his foot in his mouth.
Then Nawaz Sharif himself took centre stage and tried to turn people’s perception of his own fall from grace, which owed to his own corruption, into some sort of a crusade against the so-called establishment. Since then the heir apparent to the party leadership, Maryam Nawaz, has of course taken the responsibility of dragging the military into practically everything that is going on in the country’s politics.
But now this narrative is beginning to lose its appeal even within the opposition. In fact, if the grapevine is to be trusted it is the principle reason behind the upset in the voting for the Senate chairman and his deputy. Senior party leaders are apparently beginning to wonder if Nawaz is not letting his bitterness over getting booted for the Panama controversy cloud his judgment.
And the general public has no appetite whatsoever for any anti-state rhetoric. People’s problems revolve around issues like rising prices of everyday items, the economic crunch caused by the pandemic, and the rush for vaccines, and they are not impacted at all by what senior politicians do to each other, and how much money they spend for it, just because some of them were suddenly deprived of high office and others took it.
It’s bad enough that the country’s senior most politicians spend more time fighting each other than governing in the interest of the people, as mandated by the constitution, but for some of them to pass very controversial, and outright unacceptable, remarks about the state and its institutions needs to be addressed very strongly. Politicians, especially those that have been in government a number of times, must be made to realise that there are always consequences for crossing certain lines.
Javed Latif must retract his statement and apologise for it.