Nawaz Sharif is unhappy and he wants the country and the world to know it.

But Mr Sharif’s reaction to the end of the Faizabad protest is puzzling. The ousted prime minister would like the country to believe that not only does he disapprove of his government’s handling of the protest, but that he was unaware of the decisions being made to try and bring the protest to an end.

Yet, on Saturday, when the police-led operation to try and end the Faizabad protest was under way and protests had begun to erupt in cities across the country, Mr Sharif was pictured in a meeting in his Raiwind residence with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif.

In that meeting, Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal reportedly briefed Mr Sharif about the police operation as did the Punjab chief minister on his government’s plans to deal with protests erupting in the province.

But after the spectacular failure of those plans and the shocking concessions made to the protesters, the three-term prime minister and president of the PML-N would like to pretend that his government’s decisions have nothing to do with him.

There are two other elements of Mr Sharif’s self-serving description of the events of the past few days that are disturbing. First, the former prime minister is reportedly concerned that the outside world will once again see Pakistan as a defender of extremism and this may impact investments in the country, particularly Chinese investments under CPEC.

Consider for a moment what that implies: Mr Sharif is more concerned about the image of Pakistan in foreign capitals than the security of the denizens of Pakistan’s cities, including the federal capital, which was under siege for nearly three weeks.

While the country must be mindful of the image of Pakistan in an interconnected world, the obsession with foreign perceptions and desperation to please external benefactors is arguably part of the reason the country lurches from crisis to crisis.

The PML-N government’s fundamental duty is the people of Pakistan — ensuring their safety and security and protecting their rights. If that duty is kept front and centre and informs all governmental decision-making, the country’s image will automatically improve and concerns in foreign capitals will dissipate.

Second, Mr Sharif’s lament that governance is suffering is to ignore that he is the reason his government is deeply distracted. Ever since the Panama Papers issue erupted, and certainly since Mr Sharif’s ouster in July, the federal cabinet appears to exist largely to help Mr Sharif deal with his legal and political struggles.

Moreover, the succession struggle in the PML-N between Mr Sharif’s side of the family and Shahbaz Sharif’s family appears to have severely damaged necessary coordination between Lahore and Islamabad. Arguably, the Faizabad debacle began with Mr Sharif’s own selfishness in recent months.

Published in Dawn, November 30th, 2017