PROMISING. Brilliant. Disappointing. In the span of a few minutes, a select Twitter jury on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s much-awaited speech in the National Assembly went from hailing a mature and seasoned politician to booing a leader adept at decorating his escape route with a clever selection of ornate vocabulary.

A few days later, the theme was carried into Prime Minister Sharif’s meeting with journalists in Lahore, his city which is often, and not without reason, accused of placing its own interests above those of the rest of the country. It draws so many questions for its ‘apathy’, the false sense of security it allegedly chooses to wrap itself in.

At the hometown meeting with journalists, Mr Sharif betrayed few signs that he was going to be any less cautious in his decisions than he has been. He showed no emotion even to suggestions that his committee that is going to be holding talks with the outlawed Pakistani Taliban was essentially part of an effort to build public opinion as it was destined to further expose the ‘unreasonable’ militants.

It appears he is waiting for the courses to beckon to him rather than force-search one himself — and in the process earn some criticism from those who accuse the government of feigning ignorance of a reality that stares it in the face.

The government’s continued policy to tag militancy to the Taliban and treat it as a territorial problem has been, is, a source of concern. The selection of the peacemakers overwhelmingly from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is in a sense a continuation of the old.

The widespread nature of the threat demanded a more representative committee speaking for diverse parts of Pakistan even if its members were drawn from the PML-N. But that has not happened and one conclusion that can be reached is that the government is still somehow viewing it all as a continuation of Nek Muhammad in Fata and of Sufi Muhammad in Swat.

All these years, the government was able to strike, even if tenuous, deals with these militant leaders by conceding territory to them. The impression created in vast areas of Pakistan, including Punjab, was that the territory where these militants imposed their will existed at a distance.

After the passage of so much time and after the prolonged expansive violent campaign by the militants, it is quite strange how the formation of the official negotiating team can still create this impression that the issue was still being limited to a region in Pakistan.

There have been dire warnings how failure of talks with the Taliban could lead to war in the streets all over the country, spilling out of the imaginary battleground some of us want to restrict it to. But when and where we’re going to have an all-Pakistan team discussing it among themselves and with the Taliban and its allies all over no one is too sure about.

This government has had an All-Party Conference. It included so many of the politicians elected by the people, but even that initiative failed to provide us Pakistanis with a team of negotiators that could take our case for less violent arbitration of issues to the Taliban and ideally, to the Taliban allies that have been operating at various places inside the country.

What the government has done is that after choosing not to press its popularly mandated authority in the areas of dispute, it has decided not to entrust talks to the elected people. This is contradictory to all these public vows of supremacy of democracy and on a more basic level of the elected through the power vested in them by the people.

The Nawaz Sharif government expresses its surprise over Imran Khan’s refusal to accept the Taliban’s offer to be a part of their negotiating team. There are other groups insisting that Imran must not shy away from this responsibility and there has even been a ‘civil society’ demonstration ostensibly seeking to put the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chairman in his place at the dialogue table.

But while the government and many political parties have placed their faith in these talks, the really surprising part is that they are not exactly jostling to volunteer pleading the case of the Pakistani people with the rebellious group. It seems pretty much a case of everyone pretending to be as cut-off and as far away from the troublesome happening as they can pretend to be. All but a few of them are right now following the wait-and-see policy.

The government could have built on the APC and before and above it, on the presence of diverse political parties within the parliament to come up with a joint front taking it up with whoever had a problem with the system. Instead it has gone for a new invention and the only thing that can be said in its defence is that this committee is there to prepare ground for a grander, politically more empowered, negotiating team.

The politicians in the government and those in the opposition who are committed to a democratic order cannot isolate themselves in these challenging times. But the boos for those at the podium apart, most of them are guilty of abdicating and delegating to a point where they raise a serious question not just about their ability but about the justification of their political being. Politicians who leave the army to fight and non-politicians to talk can best be described as aloof.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.