Playing victim is easier then confronting and accepting the reality. Playing mind games is easier than compromising with alleged harsh treatment at the hands of the JIT. Nawaz is no less than a narcissist, not willing to accept the blatant truth evident through JIT findings. Hand-picked JIT demonstrated restrained and consumed all the political pressure to deliver apparently truthful recommendations.
Social and electronic media have discussed it thoroughly. Having done the post-mortem of the report, it is even apparent to public eye that there have been huge differences in declared and undeclared assets and property of the prime minister.
PM is adamant along with rest of his family in saying time and time again that, "What have we done?" They have been successful in reaching out to the masses in making them believe that they are the victim of a conspiracy and some external elements and internal non-state actors are behind this extraordinarily efficient performance of JIT.
PM in Sialkot attempted to present a view that why his family is the only one targeted. It's almost an expression of a defeated man appealing to masses. As he continued his rhetoric that he was not the only one in this looting. Whole nexus of cronies is part of this extraordinary corruption which sabotaged the whole system and has brought this country to brink of bankruptcy.
The humiliation of borrowing at unprecedented scale and losing sovereignty at the hands of financial institutions like IMF also results in harsh austerity programmes which prove self-defeating and debt and deficits reach to unsustainable levels. These institutions on face-value may appear to be the messiah but in fact are designed to keep a draconian hand on developing countries.
Coming back to PM Nawaz, it appears that as if the Sharif family has orchestrated a remarkable drama to present its case as 'innocent elite' who did nothing wrong.
Psychological game in on again. Victims are the innocent people of Pakistan still failing to comprehend the true picture of events. They are fed with false information all day along through highly disrespectful and disregarded figures like Abid Sher Ali, Danial Aziz and Talal Chaudhry. There are still plenty of takers for lies.
Opposition claims with regards to financial history of the companies owned by the Sharif family is another talk of the town. It has been revealed that most of the companies have been incurring considerable losses during their expansionary phase. This is completely unrealistic and unlikely situation that a company decides to venture into new industries given that it has been performing miserably in the existing businesses. Allegedly, companies are created and run with the corruption money laundered through a sophisticated network, aptly helped by confessed money launderer Ishaq Dar. When these companies were in red most of the time and occasionally generating profitability, how come they were a source of extravagant spending on lavish flats and elite life style and living standards for the Sharif family? With Ishaq Dar handling the activities of the premier makes his role more suspicious.
Though, government has yet to come up with a better reason for disastrous economic performance of late. Because, this time, neither there is an opposition at the constitution avenue enforcing the plunge in reserves nor it has anything to do with record trade imbalance of $32.5 billion. They must reflect on reasons for continuous decline in exports? Isn’t that self-praising incumbent finance minister in charge of a badly mismanaged economy? Going forward, with deep-rooted democratic credentials, government should allow the opposition to exercise its democratic rights and government must perform its obligation to reduce the economic chaos and social disruptions
Government seeks its power from people and the strength of its institutions empowers the democratic credentials of the elected government. The failure of successive governments in strengthening the institutions and using them in favouring their select group denies these institution any chance of strengthening. Such notions corrupt the institutions and makes way for rebellious forces that attempt to deny the continuation of democratic practices.
Government has been guilty to use the tax payers’ money extravagantly to advertise its policies on private channels to boost its image. Why does the government fail to let NAB, FIA, and other enforcers to work autonomously? Why electoral reforms are denied to allow the free and fair elections? Why the political elite and affiliates are allowed to benefit at disposal of taxpayers? Why waiving off large bank loans fails to convince public of cronyism in this country?
Despite, all this, I believe by creating controversy and ambiguity around the JIT report can still result in favour of PML-N. It may result in political gains as suspicion grows around the JIT findings. With ruling party spending lot of money on media houses by splashing big on advertisement campaigns that convince voters of their development policies, it may be able to divert the views in favour of the government.