Baba and the bazaar

How desperate is Nawaz Sharif? Well, one measure of his desperation is that he now requires other people to make mistakes in order to win a couple of hours of reprieve in the national discourse.

Forget coming back to active electoral politics, he needs other people to make colossal mistakes just to see a few tweets and news tickers that mesh with any kind of narrative that marginally aligns itself with his own. What is his narrative? “Mujhey kiyoon nikala”. It is a desperate cry from a desperate man. But this desperate man once spent eight years in the wilderness. He knows what it is to be in the stark darkness of the night, only to return victoriously again. Let’s face it. Six months after the 1999 coup, no one thought we would ever see Nawaz Sharif or Benazir Bhutto again. Today, Bhutto runs a province, and then some, from her grave. And Sharif tries to run the country via remote control, from wherever he happens to be.

There is really only one ray of dim light that Sharif clings to. He knows that nothing can salvage his reputation. But the one hope he has is that through patience, and good luck, (and a few fiery speeches and tweets, here and there) the reputations of all those that oppose him can slowly but surely be destroyed as his own was. Anyone even remotely associated with the PML-N should reflect carefully on just how low a standard their party is helping set for this country. But why would they? As destructive as it is, Sharif’s strategy has had a few very good weeks.

After the Faizabad dharna, two parties came away looking bad. Neither was named Khadim Hussain Rizvi. The first were the khakis, and the second was the provincial administration of Shahbaz Sharif. The video of a senior security officer affectionately engaging with criminals, combined with an ill-advised tweet that equated those criminals with the government, served to illustrate the divide between the army and the elected government. Meanwhile, the intra-family conflict in the House of Sharif helped fuel leaks from one side about the role of the other in lubricating the protesters path from Lahore to Islamabad. Meanwhile, no one really bothered to ask how the change to the legislation came about, who put it there, and why it was placed there to begin with. In short, no one asked any questions of Nawaz Sharif. The Faizabad dharna was a disaster for Pakistan, but as a drama enacted on the political stage, it had no cost on Nawaz Sharif. Advantage: Sharif.

After the Supreme Court decision that put the Hudaibiya Mills case back on ice, exonerated Imran Khan, and disqualified Jahangir Khan Tareen, another two parties came away looking bad. This time, it was the PTI and the Supreme Court. The PTI, whose tall claims of pristineness have been smeared with the toxicity of reality, is now a party whose second most important leader is exactly the same thing as Nawaz Sharif: declared too dirty to hold public office by the highest judicial forum in the land. The Supreme Court meanwhile now has not one major political party but two that question its judgements about the disqualification of politicians. The Hudaibiya Mills case, the Imran Khan disqualification case, and the Jahangir Khan Tareen case have conspired, coincidentally as they may have, that the Supreme Court has engaged in arbitrage. It doesn’t matter that this accusation may not be true. Neither the PTI nor the PML-N has any problem telling lies. But when they both accuse the Supreme Court of the same thing at the same time, their half-truths resonate. Once again, advantage: Sharif.

To top all this off, Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar, then gave a speech to members of the legal fraternity in which he himself said that he needed to get a few things off his chest. Among other things, the chief justice said:

“I am the elder brother of all the judges and all the lawyers – therefore, I am responsible for weaknesses in the judicial system. But I cannot fix it myself”.

“Delays in cases are the biggest menace to the system”.

“The judiciary is like your village baba. The baba’s integrity, the baba’s respect, the baba’s credibility are undoubted. The judiciary is your baba”.

“Do not accuse the baba of being part of a larger design, a larger plan… the person who can pressure the judiciary or make it do things outside of the law has not been born yet”.

“The judiciary will never let down our posterity. We have sworn an oath to the constitution. Democracy is a part of the constitution”.

“Analysts sit every evening to discuss court judgments that they have not read… analysts sit on television and say that the Supreme Court has been split, but these splits are not divisions. What you see is a product of independent decisions by independent judges working together”.

“The lawyers should be happy, the lawyers should be proud of the judiciary”.

“Incompetent judges are the primary challenge in managing the delays in the system. Multiplication of expensive litigation is caused by incompetent judges. We need a much better training system for judges”.

The portrait of the chief justice that one may draw from his speech is of one who cares deeply about the country and its people. This chief justice wants to do good, wants to solve the problems of ordinary people. This chief justice acknowledges the systemic problems in the judiciary and needs the “integrity” and “utmost honesty” of lawyers and judges to fulfil his vision of a competent and coherent judicial system that can rise above, in his words, “laundering the political dirt”. This chief justice also cares deeply about the constitution and democracy, and would never be involved in anything that would undermine the superstructure within which this country, the republic and the people live.

Despite all this, the chief justice’s speech has delivered for Nawaz Sharif what Nawaz Sharif could not have delivered in a million years. It has delivered the opening for Pakistanis to examine and criticise the superior judiciary on matters that have nothing to do with any case that the judiciary has taken on. It has exposed the venerable Baba that the chief justice painted for the nation to the filth of the bazaar. And why? Because the chief justice’s speech has exposed the killer weakness in not only our judiciary, but also in wider society, and across the world: the yearning not only to do good, but to be seen to do good. The yearning for approval, appreciation, and affirmation. The yearning for likes, RTs, favourites, and shares.

Pratap Banu Mehta, this region’s finest public intellectual has written that changes in the media and in cultural representation have had a profound impact “on a whole range of things, defining aspirations, unleashing new forms of desire, creating new norms and sometimes perverting them.” But Mehta says that this new media consciousness has three features: “First, it is ephemeral… if media makes you, it can also destroy you. Second, social movements relied on exemplars; media relies on celebrities. Third, this media is not made for dialogue. It is made for advertising. It does not involve reciprocity between citizens. It involves making them available for a message”.

To win in the era of new media consciousness, Mehta says one must “first, find a way of constantly being in the news; second, deploy celebrity power; and third, have a script that can be picked up”.

The honourable chief justice can have his baba, or he can strive for what Nitin Pai called “narrative dominance”. But he cannot have both. Those that strive for narrative dominance must have the appetite for the filth of this bazaar of opinion. No country’s judiciary is above being criticised, but every country’s judiciary must resist the temptation to seek the affection of a national audience. The filth of the bazaar is a tumour. It spreads at its own pace, with no concern for the organs it destroys. Nawaz Sharif wins if the entire body becomes infected. He doesn’t care what happens to Pakistan in the bargain, but others must.

The writer is an analyst and commentator.