MORAL outrage and high dudgeon. There has been much of this flying around since the strategic escape of Pakistan's once-upon-a-time saviour, Mian Mohammad Nawaz Sharif. But if things be considered calmly this indignation is a bit funny and entirely misplaced.

An angry army of punditry is saying that the military government has compromised itself and lost some of its moral standing by letting an accredited robber baron go off into comfortable exile. As P. G. Wodehouse might have said, this is rather rum. Where's the question of morality in all this? And since when did military regimes operate from moral pedestals?

True, the government's own protestations about what accountability was meant to be do not quite square with this Hollywood departure to the Holy Land. The Sharifs were supposed to be the biggest robbers of them all. And here because of their connections and looted money they have bought their freedom. But then it takes hardened fools to take any government's declarations at face value.

All politics is a partisan undertaking, its foremost purpose being self-aggrandizement and the crushing of one's enemies (democracy or not making no difference to this equation). It follows then that a government-driven accountability drive (as opposed to one carried out by an impartial institution) will always be selective and partisan. Why should it have been any different with General Musharraf and his generals?

If they started their accountability drive to assuage public opinion, score political points and make an example of their principal enemies they were only doing what came naturally to them. They never set out to hold evenly the scales of justice. If they had any such pretensions they would have investigated the Mehran Bank scandal in which the ISI used secret money to influence the outcome of the 1990 elections. But since they were innocent of such pretensions there is little reason to get upset if in the release of the Sharifs the nation has been presented with another example of selective justice.

Still more ridiculous than the moral outrage is the feverish calculation of how much in confiscated property and money the government has gained from the Sharifs. Political advantage and monetary gain are two different things and should not be confused. The surrendered property is just a salve to the conscience of the great Pakistani public so that ordinary people do not think that the Sharifs have been allowed to go scot-free. Let us be clear about one thing. Governments are concerned with power and not morality. So their actions should be judged or measured by how effective or striking their actions are and not according to the collected works of St Augustine. Is the departure of the Sharifs to the government's benefit or not? This is the only relevant question in the present circumstances. The Sharifs have stabbed their own party in the back, making their diehard supporters look like so many inveterate fools. If anything, the Muslim League will now fall to the lot of the anti-Nawaz camp, the Shujaats, Mian Azhars, etc. Just a week ago all the worthwhile political parties in the country were coalescing on a single platform to press for the end of military rule and the revival of democracy. Now thanks to the Sharifs and their underhand dealings with the military, the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy has been made to look like a troupe of monkeys.

Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan may keep his sang-froid in public, he after all being an old hand at such things. But how embarrassed must he be at what the Sharifs have done to him. Even as Begum Kulsoom Nawaz, who used to give the impression that butter would not melt in her mouth, was visiting the Nawabzada and putting the final touches to what was billed as the mother of all alliances, the Sharifs were cutting a deal with their captors. This is the stuff of hilarity. The nation should be grateful to the Sharifs for giving it something to laugh at after a long time. Now if the discomfiture of whatever political opposition there is in the country be not to the military's advantage, then it is hard to figure out what advantage means. Who is down-and-out and who on the upswing? General Musharraf's principal rival has begged to be let out of the country and has now gone, his political standing discredited for all time. Who gains by this? If not the military, then who?

But what about the perceived loss of innocence on the military's part? To repeat the earlier point, this is a quaint notion. About a military government, or indeed any government, can it be said that it has forfeited the moral high ground? This is a phrase which in any case makes me want to reach for my boot. Governments are supposed to strengthen their grip on power and then, if the gods be kind, deliver. Occupying the moral high ground is a business best left to mahatmas and bishops. So, then, where do we stand? In truth, the first remotely sensible thing this government has done has been to heed Saudi advice (or pressure) to let Sharif go and allow the Sandow of Pakistani politics to stew in his own juice. Field Marshal Idi Amin who also lives in Jeddah has the consolation of an extended harem. What consolation will Nawaz Sharif have? The constant company of his father and only wife? It is a prospect to make the stoutest heart quail. The deposed emperor Shahjehan endured the long years of his imprisonment in Agra Fort because his son Aurangzeb did not take away his Moorish slave-girls from him. Comparing Shahjehan with our ersatz version is to insult the original. Still, we shall have to wait and see how the erstwhile Shahjehan of Pakistan copes with his exile. It is another matter of course if the military government is unable to profit from the advantage it has gained. To be fair to it, it has done nothing right, lacking vision and even basic political sense and giving the overriding impression of a bunch of (well-meaning) amateurs swimming against the tide. No one should be surprised then if, in keeping with these decisive traits, the government fritters away the tiny advantage it has reaped.

After all, the departure of the Sharifs means nothing by itself unless it becomes the centrepiece of a new political opening - an initiative which buys more political space for the government and brings it greater political support. But can the amateurs running this show bring this about? Just consider. Anyone in General Musharraf's place would have captured the airwaves at once and taken the nation into confidence about Sharif's precipitate departure. But it is only today (Thursday) that I read in the papers that the General may be addressing the nation. The conclusion is plain: the remotest conception of intelligent public relations this government lacks.

As for the Sharifs, the tears shed in some quarters about their betrayal and treachery are also a bit out of place. The wonder is not that the Sharifs no longer could take the strain. The wonder is how they took it for so long. Thirteen months after all is not a short period and would test the fortitude of souls far hardier than them. In any event it is easy setting standards of sacrifice for other people and somewhat more difficult doing the sacrificing oneself. Nevertheless, the Sharifs could have been a bit more graceful in defeat. If nothing else, they could have spared their party the ordeal of false defiance they put it through. Even as they were negotiating their own safety they were telling their followers to stand tall and be counted. This more than their actual flight was a dishonourable thing to do. But then let us not forget who Nawaz Sharif really was: a product of accident and military patronage and not someone cut in the mould of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. So in the end when the crunch came he could only be true to himself and from where he came. Even so, if anyone should do any soul-searching, it is the people of Pakistan and their great armed forces. How could the people of Pakistan ever take someone like the Sharifs seriously? And how could the political wizards of the Pakistan army (and their bureaucratic henchmen like Ghulam Ishaq Khan and others of his ilk) prime the Sharifs as their political favourites? How small Pakistani leaders? But how much smaller and small-minded their shadowy creators?