Media Discourses of Pakistan Government Officials on Panama Leaks: A Critical Analysis

Abstract

The present paper attempts to focus media discourses of Pakistani Government Officials in the backdrop of PANAMA LEAKS scandal. PANAMA PAPERS, usually called Panama Leaks, are about 11.5 million leaked documents about the economic corruption of the most influential statesmen, politicians and business tycoons of the world. According to PANAMA PAPERS (April 2016), Pakistani Ex. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his family members have also been reported guilty of having off-shore companies and illegal sources of income. The representatives of the government come forward and try to defend Prime Minister and his family members through their political rhetoric. They do not answer the allegations put against them but accuse their opponents of ‘derailing democracy’ and creating hurdles in the path of the progress of the country. The research questions of the study are: why and how do Government officials try to win the sympathies of the common people on the issue of PANAMA LEAKS through their political rhetoric on electronic media, and how does ‘social pressure’ lead the political leaders to defend themselves and their political ideologies?

The study attempts to focus the media discourses of only four Government officials on PANAMA LEAKS after the ruling of the Supreme Court to make Joint Investigation Team (JIT) on 20^th April 2017.  The research is carried out under a grand theory of Critical Discourse Analysis. The researcher’s qualitative approach alongside with Van Dijk’s “ideological square” is taken up as a middle-range theory to investigate the research questions. Keeping in mind the idea of triangulation, the concept of “social pressure” has been taken from the field of cognitive psychology to understand the working of the political mindset behind these media discourses.

The analysis reveals that the politicians fight not for the rights of the common people, but they have their own political motifs. They assert dominance and power through challenging the thinking, beliefs, and views of the common people. The beneficiaries of the study are the common people of Pakistan. The study aims at encouraging them to wisely use the power of their votes and choose the people who could be the true representatives of their hopes and aspirations.