The whole tree

In his second address to the nation since the Panama Papers leaks seemed to implicate his family, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif finally appeared in a mood to compromise. He accepted the opposition’s demand that the matter be investigated by a judicial commission to be formed by the current chief justice of the Supreme Court rather than a retired judge. A letter has now been written to Chief Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali, who is in Turkey till May 1 and will only respond to the letter then. For now, the government has bought itself a week or so of breathing space at a time when it felt cornered on all sides by the PPP, PTI – and also as the army chief called for across-the-board accountability. The terms of reference of the commission, as laid out in the prime minister’s letter to the chief justice, certainly give it the power to thoroughly investigate the names in the leaks. It will have the power to subpoena witnesses, issue search warrants and determine if any laws have been infringed. The devil, as always, will be in the details. The maze of international finance is a complicated one well beyond the understanding of laymen. The commission will have to make use of financial forensics to determine the source of the money, whether it has been taxed and if it was illegally taken out of the country.

A judicial commission set up by the chief justice was probably the best option to reach at the truth of the information in the Panama Papers leaks. But the terms of reference sent to the chief justice do not restrict the commission to the names in the Panama Papers alone. It can investigate any Pakistani who has an offshore company, has had loans written off or been accused of taking kickbacks. This has been interpreted by the opposition as a stalling tactic by the government. Whatever the PML-N motives may have been, this was the right thing to do as it finally gives us an opportunity to grapple with the corruption that pervades the elite from the political class to the business elite to the judiciary and the armed forces. Now that Imran has got what he demanded, he has lost his best argument. This, despite Imran Khan and the rest of the opposition’s best efforts, should never have been about one man.

All the political parties had agreed that the chief justice alone was competent to form the commission; and now the actual formation of the commission is the SC’s task. It is also up to the court to prioritise the cases to be dealt with. Of course such an investigation is not an overnight event, but this should worry only those who are in great hurry to make it to the corridors of power, insincerely using the slogan of corruption to target the present government. The process in any case should not take very long. The current media focus, a ‘determined’ opposition and other influences at play are not going to make it possible to first dredge up cases from the distant past as a way to stymie the investigation. There will be a reckoning for Nawaz Sharif but equally there must be many in the opposition and elsewhere quivering in their boots at the thought that the tables may be turned on them.       The commission can also make recommendations to put in place measures that can enable anti-corruption mechanisms to be built into the working of our system. More transparency will be added if the commission’s report is also made public at the time it is submitted to the government. In a country where there are few innocent people in positions of power and influence, this commission may be just the thing we need. We hope the chief justice takes up the matter and the SC plays a role that may turn out to be historic. But we may be getting ahead of ourselves, for the simple reason that the judiciary, if it chooses to do so, can make a difference here. The assumption in this editorial has been that those who are opportunistically crying corruption for petty motives of personal aggrandizement will actually let this happen. Call it hope against hope.