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Rangers v ZardariJune 15th’s raid on the Sindh Building Control Authority (SBCA) was a game-changer. To be certain, Major-General Bilal Akbar’s action could not have taken place without the GHQ’s specific approval. For the record, Major-General Bilal Akbar’s action was the first such action in the past 16 years whereby

By Dr Farrukh Saleem
June 21, 2015
Rangers v Zardari
June 15th’s raid on the Sindh Building Control Authority (SBCA) was a game-changer. To be certain, Major-General Bilal Akbar’s action could not have taken place without the GHQ’s specific approval. For the record, Major-General Bilal Akbar’s action was the first such action in the past 16 years whereby the GHQ turned its guns towards white collar crime.
White collar crime was first defined in 1939 as “a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status” (sociologist Edwin Sutherland). White collar crime is “financially motivated nonviolent crime committed by government or business professionals.” And a game-changer is “an event, idea or procedure that affects a significant shift in the current way of doing or thinking about something.”
Asif Ali Zardari’s June 16 outburst was in bad taste but the substance revolved around just one theme: the institution of the military is expanding its reach into financially motivated nonviolent white collar crime. PM Nawaz Sharif, given the choice, will not –and cannot afford to –support the GHQ’s ‘infringement’ into civilian systemic financial corruption.
PM Nawaz Sharif’s relations with Asif Ali Zardari will now be under the GHQ’s microscope and those relations will now determine the GHQ’s relations with the PM. The original three choices with the PM were: to side with the GHQ; to side with the PPP or simply delay the decision.
The PM is now in a state of a serious dilemma –side with the PPP or side with the GHQ –“two possibilities, neither of which is practically acceptable” (Zardari’s June 16 outburst is forcing the PM to decide sooner rather than later). Siding with the army and imposing ‘Governor’s Rule’ could mean the PPP resigning from the Senate and the National Assembly (thus threatening the federal government). Siding with Zardari could mean an ‘end of a road from which no exit is possible’.
Here’s what’s on. One: the GHQ has turned its guns towards Asif Ali Zardari. Two: the GHQ desires Nawaz Sharif’s ‘helping hand’ in the GHQ’s Operation Clean-up Sindh. Three: Syed Qaim Ali Shah has put it on record that the Rangers are “acting beyond their authority and mandate as assigned to them under law”. Four: The Rangers claim that they derive their authority and mandate from the decisions of the Apex Committee. Five: Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan has gone on record that the apex committee is not a legal reality.
The GHQ, in order to remain credible and affective, would have to act above the political as well as the geographical divide. The social media is already asking: “if financially motivated nonviolent white collar crime was restricted to Sindh?”
The Sindh Rangers may want to claim that they went into SBCA looking for terrorist links but it was the Sindh Rangers who briefed the anti-terrorism court that Sultan Qamar Siddiqui, the VP Fishermen’s Cooperative Society, allegedly gave “70 percent share of the corruption money to Bilawal House”. SBCA, in essence, has little to do with terrorism; it’s more about a hundred billion a year.
Can the GHQ do a complete clean-up without a legal mandate to do the clean-up? In Sindh, the gap between de facto (read: what the Rangers are doing) and de jure (read: Rangers’ legal mandate) is widening. Over the medium to long term, for the GHQ to achieve its mission goals the ever-widening gap between de facto and de jure realities would have to be bridged.
In a nutshell: the GHQ wants to clean-up Sindh. Asif Ali Zardari and Altaf Hussain want to maintain the status quo. The GHQ does not have the legal mandate to clean-up Sindh. The GHQ wants to use Nawaz Sharif’s mandate to clean-up Sindh. For the GHQ, time is of the essence. For Nawaz Sharif, postponing the decision to an ever-postponing future is the best policy.
How about a grand compromise – an “agreement or settlement of the dispute reached by each side making concessions”? How about an NRO 2015?
A compromise, I have been told, is the “art of dividing a cake in such a way that everyone believes he has the biggest piece.” After all, the cake here is the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
The writer is a columnist based in Islamabad.
Email: farrukh15@hotmail.com. Twitter: @saleemfarrukh