The writer is former executive editor of The News and a senior journalist with Geo TV.
Like a freak weather phenomenon, whose origins remain a subject of intense debate, the Panama leaks continue to generate killer heatwaves in different parts of the globe. Prime ministers, ministers, corporation heads have been upended. Mega celebrities, entertainment icons, sports heroes, art collectors – all billionaires – are running for cover and legal protection.
There is a considerably long list of might-be victims that has not unfolded yet. In all likelihood, more revelations from the offshore companies’ business will widen the scope of the scandal. Countries and regional blocs all over the world are sweating over ways to regulate tax havens that are estimated to house almost nine percent of total global wealth. Now financial rogues have fewer places to hide.
Here in Pakistan the storm has not really produced the knock-out effect on the Nawaz Sharif government as many had anticipated in the first few days after it had broken out. In fact, two weeks into the controversy you can already see exhaustion on social and mainstream media. Other issues, like the terribly ill-planned operation against the infamous gang of dacoits in Punjab’s southernmost district of Rajanpur, are grabbing more attention than the alleged wealth smuggling by the ruling family.
Does this mean that this matter is on its way out of the national discourse without a meaningful conclusion that ferrets out facts, apportions blame and establishes criminality? Certainly not. The aftermath of the Panama leaks still has the Sharif government on the hook, but at the same time it has also created a tough situation for other parties, most significantly the PTI.
The government’s situation is best described in the ruling family’s unprecedented use of social media to create public sympathy and send out a message of internal unity. Prime Minister Sharif’s two pictures – one with his mother (who hitherto had zero public profile) and the other in what looks like a clinic in London – are worth many thousand words. The first shows him as an honourable man who seeks the blessings of his beloved mother for everything, while the second is meant to justify the official reasons for his travel to the UK and kill speculation that he was running around trying to find a way out of the mess.
No less exceptional was the exchange of pleasant comments around the first picture between Shehbaz Sharif and Mariam Safdar. This was meant to dispel the impression that the family is divided over the Panama leaks’ revelations – especially after one of Shehbaz Sharif’s wives urged the Sharifs to abandon their luxurious ways and bring back their wealth to the country.
When ruling families – especially those who jealously guard their private lives – do such things you can tell that they are under tremendous stress. Sympathy-gainers like these are desperate measures. They speak of desperate situations.
It is understandable why the Sharifs are so sensitive to this scandal. This is unlike rigging charges that involved a vast array of other political interests and, therefore, attempted to challenge the political system’s legitimacy. This scandal leaves everyone else out of the frame and focuses exclusively on the heart of the PML-N’s political power: the prime minister, his sons and daughter. This involves the Queen Bee, or the King on the chessboard. If they are checkmated, the game is over. That is the primary reason the Sharif government is going to great lengths to create ramparts around the family. The entire effort is to get them honourably acquitted.
One way to do it is to make sure that the probe commission operates with the help of qualified men and women and does its work without let or hindrance. If the findings of the commission determine that there was no wrongdoing on the part of the ruling family then this could give the Sharifs some space to breathe.
But the problem is that even the commission’s formation is hobbled with challenges, the primary being Imran Khan’s insistence that this be headed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, even though the chief justice himself has ruled out this possibility. Further, even if the probe commission does begin to work with bipartisan consensus, its work will be long and painfully detailed. Every submission, every claim, every document that the Sharifs bring before the commission would be fodder for the accusers.
Media debate is already split along the usual lines of ‘hang them high Gen Sharif’ and ‘Allah is with Nawaz Sharif’. Before the Sharif name is cleared (if it is cleared) it will be besmeared so much that it might not even matter what the probe commission has to say on the matter. In other words, it will get ugly without the guaranteed prospect of getting better afterwards. Billions of dollars might be easy to obtain but they are very hard to explain. The Sharifs have a lot or explaining to do the nation.
For the PTI, the coming months might not be all that easy either. For now Imran Khan is enjoying what he loves the most – cameras, headlines, statements. In one word, attention. Yet his strategy of declaring long marches on every count has become trite. Even within his party there is fatigue with protests that lead nowhere.
There were protests about drone attacks. Drones continue to attack. There were Khan’s do-or-die promises to stop Nato supplies. They continue. He moved with much energy and speed about getting Altaf Hussain’s neck through his own efforts. That has come to nothing. He launched a nation-wide movement against loadshedding from Faisalabad. That fizzled out. He promised to focus more on Khyber Pakhtunkhwa but he hardly visits the province whose affairs don’t show any revolutionary outcome. And then there was the anti-rigging protest with solemn vows to not leave the place without seeing the Sharifs being dragged out. That resulted in his return to the same parliament he had called corrupt and fake. This is quite an unremarkable record to have for a man whose entire repute is built around the assertion that he is a ‘doer’.
Now that he is setting his party out on another hazardous journey of protest and siege in the name of corruption and accountability, there are legitimate concerns within that a few months down the line this too will become another empty, fleeting or futile effort.
This could become different if Imran Khan had the capacity to weave a broader alliance against the Sharifs. But he is a solo player who has a Donald Trump-like tendency to use abuse and innuendo to belittle others, and therefore stands alone in a culture where words matter. (He has used references to dogs, pigs, dacoits, thugs to describe Asif Ali Zardari and Chaudhry Pervez Elahi – the two parties he is trying to get on board against the Sharifs.) Again, Donald Trump-like, he is a divider and not a uniter because only in a divisive environment does he stand out more prominently.
This strategy (he did not invent it and it is in use all over the world) would have been successful had his party affairs been silken smooth. They are not. Despite the billboard-size claims of being internally democratic, there is a deepening perception that the party is governed by A T M: Aleem, Tareen and Money. Internal elections have become a sad spectacle as vested interests, who hold Mr Khan’s attention, ensure that they don’t lose their privileged positions.
After kicking out two election commissioners the party is still miles away from devising a system to have credible elections – and this is apart from the raging turf battles. In all three provinces competing groups led by billionaires have the daggers out for each other. These internal troubles have shown in all the electoral exercises that the party has taken part in since 2014. It has not performed exceptionally. In fact, it has not even done marginally well.
So at a time when Imran Khan is plunging into another street agitation his launch pad, the party, is panting for steady breath. His gambit, like all his gambits, is a gamble. If the Sharifs sink under more disclosures from the leaks, very few would point to the costs of previous protests; but if they hold on and ride the storm, Imran Khan will have accumulated another costly embarrassment. Further, the Sharifs will not go down without badly bruising their opponent. While in the alternate universe of PTI supporters, Imran Khan is an angel, his opponents will dredge out every piece of personal and professional information that defiles his image and raises questions on his own value system. For him and the PTI the coming days can be tough and brutal. All in all, a hot summer lies ahead.
Email: syedtalathussain@gmail.com
Twitter: @TalatHussain12
