Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will certainly feel vindicated after the UK publication, the Daily Mail finally and belatedly apologised for its slanderous story filed three years ago. The Prime Minister had been accused of misusing DFID funds during his time as Chief Minister, and the news outlet and the journalist that filed the story could not furnish any substantial evidence for these claims ever since the report was first printed in 2019.
But even after the case is a victory for PM Sharif, political opponents in the PTI are spinning the narrative and maintaining their stance of corruption against the Prime Minister and his family. And herein lies the problem with the idea of corruption—repeat the lie often enough, and some people start believing it, regardless of what the facts are. Since 2013 or even earlier, PTI has been pushing its narrative of fighting against corruption without ever sufficiently defining what corruption they are referring to, or even how it will counter it. This has meant that corruption as a term has been used to conduct a witch hunt on many occasions, with devastating effect. PTI supporters for instance, wholeheartedly believe that opponents are corrupt, and no amount of retractions and court cases are likely to convince them otherwise.
For Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif the UK ruling is very beneficial. There are reports that the PTI government helped furnish Daily Mail with the ‘evidence’ that it used in court, and the fact that the case still went against the publication’s favour indicates that the PTI narrative, as expected, contains little proof.
By definition, corruption is the abuse of power for personal, political, or economic gain, which is why the term can be used so wantonly. Yesterday was anti-corruption day, and perhaps for this year’s edition, we should first look to collectively get our definitions in order. The abuse of power and bribery are common practices in Pakistan, but unless we stop using strawmen to conduct wasteful and useless investigations, we will not be any closer to fighting against these issues.