We see our Person of the Year segment as an opportunity to report (and criticise) our national situation with all its moles and warts: a society where clerics publicly sanction violence against women, a country where one of the greatest humanitarians the world has ever seen is criticised for helping non-Muslims, a republic where those belonging to minority religions and minority sects are killed routinely.

Our list of nominees compares the likes of Misbahul Haq – who turned his unruly band of exiled cricketers into the number one Test team in the world – with a bureaucrat who assumed that public money was his own to take home. The list is certainly flawed but it is only as flawed as the society which it is trying to represent.

In a flawed democracy where politicians are reviled and generals get all the public gratitude, Raheel Sharif is the Herald’s predictable Person of the Year 2016.

This is an excerpt from the Herald's Annual 2017 cover story. To read more subscribe to the Herald in print.