Truth and the mandate: uneasy companions

Islamabad diary

PM is not named in the Panama Leaks…Alhamdolillah, Allah be praised. Nawaz Sharif, looking pious and an innocent expression drawn across his countenance, repeated this line in his latest address to the nation. His loudspeakers and buglers, led by the inimitable Pervaiz Rashid – our cardboard answer to Goebbels – keep hammering away at the same theme. This is their last line of defence.

The PM is not named but his children are, all three of them: the two enterprising brothers, Hasan and Hussain, whose enterprising skills, as recounted by the buglers of the Mandate, put them above Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg; and the Crown Princess herself, Maryam Safdar nee Nawaz.

Even if we are to swallow the Sharif line of defence, don’t the kids’ exploits, their names emblazoned in the Panama Papers, cast the net of suspicion firmly on the PM’s shoulders? When were the offshore companies set up? Where did the money come from? These two questions the PM has consistently ducked. No wonder, no amount of Alhamdollilahs, Allah be praised, are clearing the air. The relevant answers are just not coming.

The one small advance is the letter to My Lord the Chief Justice asking for the formation of a commission to look into corruption, kickbacks and loan write-offs since the creation of Pakistan. If their lordships were simple enough to march along this path delineated for them by the PM, it is a safe bet that they or their successors will be still struggling with this inquiry 50 years from now.

Nawaz Sharif seems to have not a very high opinion of his countrymen. He thinks they can be easily fooled.

In his speech Nawaz Sharif was at pains to stress his Pakistani-ism: his son-of-the-soil status, born here, bred here, his everything in Pakistan, conveniently forgetting that the Panama Papers are about his family’s extensive holdings kept not here but safely stashed abroad. How do we read the Pakistani-ism in Mayfair properties and hidden offshore companies? Unless of course Pervaiz Rashid has a different take on the subject.

It’s hard to take any of this stuff seriously. It’s more comedy and buffoonery than anything else, although you would have to applaud the audacity on display…the expectation that like scandals in the past this too will blow over, causing some damage but nothing irreparable. The PM still seems to think he will pull it off.

The terms of reference for the proposed commission are wider than the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans combined. But the main issue is fairly simple and it is up to their lordships to press the government on that. The ownership of the Mayfair flats and offshore companies stands admitted. The onus of explanation thus rests on Nawaz Sharif and go-getting children – they have to be asked to provide the ownership documents of the properties and the companies and explain the source of the funds that went into both.

Only when these documents are provided is an audit possible. Otherwise the best Sherlock Holmes on the planet can spend the next ten years looking and get nothing from the Panama government or the law firms concerned.

Most people, including some of our best lawyers, are barking up the wrong tree. There must be facts laid on the table first – known and admitted facts – before an investigation can be pushed further. The government has written to the Supreme Court. It is for their lordships to demand that the known facts be laid before them. The government wishes to saddle the Supreme Court with a never-ending investigation. Not to make too fine a point of it, the PM wants to take their lordships for a ride. He seems to be hoping for too much.

There are of course other Pakistani names figuring in the Panama Papers, a whole list of them. But there is only one Pakistani prime minister and his family. The 200 other odd names are not prime ministers of Pakistan. They are businessmen, industrialists, high-flyers, whatever. They must carry their share of the blame. But a prime minister’s culpability, if proven, is greater than that of any other individual. He holds not just any position of trust and responsibility but, in a parliamentary democracy, the greatest position of trust of all.

The burglars in the Watergate saga were others, names now mostly forgotten. But there was only one president who lied and tried to cover-up for the break-in. When he was caught out in the lie there was no escape for him. He had to go home.

If Richard Nixon had tried out Nawaz Sharif’s line of defence – that he was not one of the burglars – we can well imagine the storm that would have ensued. Here we have it in print, in black-and-white, the PM’s children holding on to offshore companies and London properties and not able to explain anything, and the prime minister looking into the camera and saying he has been charged with nothing…Alhamdolillah, Allah be praised.

The trail of the London properties goes all the way back to the 1990s when the prime ministerial kids weren’t the strapping youngsters they are now and the PM says he stands accused of nothing. If we take the PM at his word we’ll be laying the foundations of a new jurisprudence.

But we should know whom we are dealing with. The Sharifs are not capitalists in the Rockefeller or Guggenheim traditions. They are not Birlas or Tatas. They are from Brandreth Road, their psyche and outlook shaped in that rough-and-ready school. They have known what it is to sit and wait outside government offices and curry favour with officials, high and low, to gain favours and advantages. The same personalised approach they brought to government when they came to power – an official was only good and trustworthy if he was their man, loyal to them alone.

As Shuja Nawaz recounts in his well-researched history of the Pakistan army, ‘Crossed Swords’ they tried this approach with generals too, even with Gen Asif Nawaz, wishing to gift him a BMW, which of course he politely declined.

Well-meaning commentators say the PM should step down and clear his name. They haven’t read their PM correctly. Such grand and noble gestures are not for those whose training school, in life as in business, has been Brandreth Road. Until the end he will hold on, admitting to nothing, protesting his innocence and hoping that the storm will blow over.

But a crucial concession the PM has been compelled to make, writing to Milord the CJ. What comes of this we do not know but there is a new element in the fire, the march of events placing a huge responsibility at the SC’s threshold.

Meanwhile, things are getting hot outside. The PTI is on the warpath. Imran Khan won’t let this matter drop. Nor will the media. The PPP is caught betwixt this and that. It wants to regain lost glory but is also mindful of the skeletons in its cupboard. Still, counting everything, we are in for a long, hot summer. And the generals, like lions weighing the prospects of a hunt, are eyeing all this carefully. The clouds are going nowhere. Only the suspense is building up.

Email: bhagwal63@gmail.com