THE hypocrisy of our democratic leadership is a gift that keeps giving. Last week, the president of the PML-N in Punjab, Rana Sanaullah, berated the former army chief, retired Gen Qamar Bajwa, as a “national criminal” who had committed a “crime bigger than a murder offence”. He was echoing a statement made by his party’s supreme leader, Nawaz Sharif, who has on several occasions held Mr Bajwa directly responsible for his ouster and now wishes for him to be held to account for his ‘crimes’. Just a day later, however, Mr Sanaullah all but confirmed a long-held suspicion that his party had also colluded with Gen Bajwa in its efforts to remove the PTI from power. Mr Sanaullah had been asked during a TV interview why the PML-N supported a three-year extension for Gen Bajwa in 2019, which he described as a ‘strategic move’. “It would seem that the consequences of that decision allowed us to achieve our goal,” Mr Sanaullah said — the goal being to lower the “intensity” with which the “fitna” and “fasaad” of the PTI was prevailing over the country at the time. “Sometimes things seem a certain way, but their implied effects [sic] are something else,” the PML-N leader concluded.

Was it hubris that led Mr Sanaullah to implicate the PML-N and the military in what he has made out to be a conspiracy, sealed with a quid pro quo deal, to unseat the PTI government? Or did he wish to imply that the PML-N had, with its political guile, ‘used’ the former army chief to achieve its own political goals? Considering the number of times former PM Shehbaz Sharif publicly thanked and congratulated Gen Bajwa for his services while he was in office, it is difficult to reconcile the PML-N’s new stance with its leaders’ effervescent gratitude while in power. Rank hypocrisy or realpolitik? Time will tell. One can also not help but recall how both Gen Bajwa and ISPR repeatedly assured the public of their ‘neutrality’ amidst the political chaos that broke out in 2022. The main beneficiary of the PTI’s downfall now suggests that was not the case. Can the PTI chief be faulted, then, for turning his ire on that institution’s leadership if he had correctly identified the role they had played? Perhaps such questions are best left for another time.

Published in Dawn, September 25th, 2023