Speaking matters
IT was on the previous Friday (March 6) that the government raised petrol prices. And while the news about the price hike began doing the rounds shortly before it was announced, the amount took everyone by surprise – over Rs50 per litre. It is said to be our biggest hike in petrol prices in a single day — and it left citizens spitting fire. For most people struggling with inflation and weakened purchasing power, it was a cruel blow, regardless of the limited options in front of the government.
The government was aware of the impact of the decision and yet it took Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif another three days to address the people. The decision on Friday was announced by three cabinet members and it was Monday night before Prime Minister House released a recorded speech of the PM explaining the hike. The urgency of the matter demanded a shorter response time from the executive; the PM should have responded more quickly.
Leaving aside how convincing the speech was, the entire episode once again underlined the struggle of the PML-N to communicate with the people. This has less to do with the PM’s speaking ability and more with the party’s approach to communication. It’s a party which has always found it difficult to communicate directly with the people, unlike the PPP and PTI that as populist parties have thrived on charismatic speakers.
The party is also suffering because it is a house divided. In such times of crises, other parties would bring forward their most popular face to address the people and inform them of the coming crisis and hardship. This would be Nawaz Sharif but because he isn’t in government, he stays away from all things federal — the little ownership he does take is for provincial matters, while Shehbaz Sharif is stuck as the face of all difficult decision-making at the centre. For him, it is probably a major victory if the government in Punjab doesn’t publicly go against a decision announced by the centre. Maryam Nawaz could be a possible replacement for her father but she too maintains a distance from Islamabad and is busy building her own image.
The PM’s late response to the petrol price hike exposes his party’s poor communication skills.
This works against the PML-N government at the centre, because of the three main faces of the party — Shehbaz Sharif, Nawaz Sharif and Maryam Nawaz — the PM is the weakest link as public speaker. He doesn’t do all that well, speaking to the cameras and reading from a teleprompter.
But instead of recognising this and trying to create an environment in which the PM comes across as more comfortable, the communication team (or whoever else is in charge) has little imagination to consider different options. Perhaps he is more comfortable talking to people in smaller groups where the communication takes place during a conversation; and he may be doing this with a select group of journalists. But this will rarely become public because the gatherings are so limited.
Indeed, the PM was generous enough to call all journalists when he was first voted in, back in 2022, and then too had a similar interaction when his term ended. Since then, his interactions are limited and usually kept under wraps.
But this is more than just a choice by him or his team. This partly stems from the PML-N’s old habits or culture of co-opting the media through ad revenue and other measures such as limited outreach rather than reaching out to journalists and through them (or directly) to the people.
Indeed, parties in Pakistan have generally been held hostage by their roots when it comes to communication. For the PPP, the idea that the media was always going to be hostile was shaped by the Zia years, as was the assumption that negative reporting didn’t matter. This attitude has now changed but by now some perceptions are set in stone where the party is concerned.
The PML-N’s approach in contrast was different. Its earlier years were shaped by the attitude that journalists could be co-opted. The ‘helicopter group’, a phrase familiar to most in the media industry, was introduced when the PML-N was in power in the 1990s. It is an approach the party has stuck to over the years. It tends to focus on ad spend or access to media owners, interspersed with interactions with journalists seen as friendly. Communicating directly with the people or via hacks in general is kept to a minimal. Interviews are few and far between and so are speeches. With the larger context in which the party acquired power after 2024, it has now limited its interactions even more.
This approach is also apparent in the way the party’s information ministers operate. They too avoid TV interviews and discussions. Contrast this with the PTI’s information ministers who — federal or provincial — would appear on multiple talk shows every evening. This was true of whoever was put in that chair, be it Fawad Chaudhry, Shibli Faraz or Firdous Ashiq Awan. In contrast, Marriyum Aurangzeb (when she held the position) or Atta Tarar are rarely seen on TV, for their approach was and is to manage rather than communicate. More than just a personal preference, this is the party’s approach.
It is noteworthy that there is nothing inherently wrong with this approach during routine times. However, in terms of crises, it has limited efficacy. To some extent, the party realises this — Nawaz Sharif himself held multiple interactions at Punjab House in 2017 after he was disqualified by the courts. But when there is a crisis while in power, as is the present case, the government and party seem paralysed. Now is the time for leaders to reach out to the people directly. Not only would this underline the urgency of the situation, it would also allow them to inspire confidence. It also offers the assurance of a leadership which is there with the people. But the PML-N lags in this — in 2022 during the economic crisis and now once again.
The writer is a journalist.
Published in Dawn, March 17th, 2026