Why don’t they take their politics offshore?

Islamabad diary

If those who claim to lead us – successors of Quaid-e-Azam, no less – can’t trust Pakistan with their money, why are they so interested in keeping their politics in Pakistan? If they must have flats in Mayfair and along Hyde Park why, in the name of all that is holy, don’t they try their political luck in London?

Sadiq Khan today is mayor of London. I wish he were prime minister of Pakistan. But he wouldn’t make it here. We wouldn’t elect him chairman of a union council. For starters, he doesn’t have the right title: no Mian, Malik, Raja or Chaudhry to his name. A plain Mr Sadiq wouldn’t get past the nominating process here.

To qualify for high office in Pakistan, you also need an offshore address – something in the Cayman or Virgin Islands and flats, a row of them, in Mayfair. Sadiq Khan has neither. He can be mayor of London but nothing here.

Wealth is not the issue. Donald Trump is a billionaire, perhaps many times over. And he is not afraid to flaunt his wealth. When he holds a press conference in New York it is in the lobby of his own Trump Tower. He has palatial homes everywhere and doesn’t hide them…because his wealth is all there, all declared and accounted for. He has no need for money-laundering or hiding behind fake addresses. There is no thieving and lying involved.

And he doesn’t pretend to be more pious than he is, and he certainly doesn’t spend the last ten days of Lent, the fasting month for Christians, in some cellar or corner of the Vatican. He dons no cloak of morality.

Unlike our redeemers and messiahs…on their piety and morality the entire nation could choke. Trump is what he is, take it or leave it. Again unlike our leaders who put on one look in Pakistan, an entirely different one while surveying their properties in Dubai, London or New York.

The Trump bragging, were it to be applied here, we could survive. Who would survive Pakistani hypocrisy, or the morality that supposed keepers of the national conscience keep shoving down our throats?

It is a tough sell being an ordinary Pakistani citizen, what with all our problems. But it is a tougher sell being a Pakistani leader. President Obama has only one job to look after. He doesn’t spend half the night worrying about his offshore accounts in the Bahamas or holiday homes behind phony addresses in the south of France or Mayfair London. Our leaders hold down two jobs at the same time: looking to the supreme welfare of the Pakistani people and counting their hidden money. Which is the tougher calling?

American presidents must survive after retirement by writing books or delivering well-paid speeches. Our leaders provide for their post-post-retirements while they are in office. Then when caught out, as by the Panama leaks, they must work overtime to cover their tracks. Look at PM Nawaz these days – fending off the opposition, looking into the cameras and denying anything remotely wrong and then addressing defiant public meetings and holding hands in solidarity with, of all people, Maulana Fazlur Rehman. Prime minister of such a thankless country…who says the job is easy?

Maulana Fazlur Rehman was lately in the news for another reason. He was admitted in the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences for indigestion. Oily and spicy foods, was the doctors’ diagnosis (I am not making this up). According to folklore handed down through the ages, Pakistani clerics or holy fathers were supposed to have unbreakable digestions. And here one of the holiest of them with his impressive paunch – and it does catch the eye – was laid low by indigestion. What is the world coming to?

And there was a doctor, since suspended, who took a picture of the Maulana on his phone and uploaded it. Of course he broke the Hippocratic Oath – confidentiality of the relationship between doctor and patient, etc. But he also must have had a keen sense of humour. Watching the Maulana in the throes of indigestion, it’s a fair bet he must have cracked up…and found the photo-op irresistible.

In hindsight it is clear we had the wrong founding fathers. In today’s surroundings they would have been totally out of place. Jinnah with his integrity and financial probity…would he have made it as leader today? Integrity has become a laughable concept in today’s Pakistan. Anyone honest we say is impractical. Take Air Marshal Asghar Khan: honest and principled and a failure in politics. And look at the stars of our politics, the leading lights, and one feels like laughing at the founding fathers and falling at the feet of the stars.

Jinnah being asked by his ADC, Lt Gul Hasan (later army chief), prior to a cabinet meeting whether the ministers were to be served tea or coffee, and the governor general saying, don’t these gentlemen have tea at home before coming? Liaquat Ali Khan, the first prime minister, Nawab of Karnal, leaving all his property behind in India and claiming not a marla, not a sliver, as evacuee property in Pakistan. Tell this to today’s youngsters and they will have a hard time believing it.

The lies and roundabout arguments we are hearing in Pakistan in relation to the Panama leaks would be laughed out of court in any other democracy. No democratic leader elsewhere could survive the same charges. Here a desperate attempt is underway to bury the whole thing under legalities and technicalities. But, miracle of miracles, it is not working. Nawaz Sharif and family are being painted into a corner.

If it was only about them it wouldn’t matter so much. But the ruling family’s evasive tactics are endangering something more: the edifice of democracy. The opposition parties, against expectations, have come together and are demanding that the inquiry regarding the offshore accounts and the Mayfair properties begin, as is only fair, with the PM and family. The other names can be taken up later. Trust PM and government to resist this with all their might, aware that if one brick slips the entire wall may come crashing down. But the questions are not going away and the tension is mounting.

The lesson of Pakistani history is that when politicians fail in resolving a deadlock other forces step in, and we all know what that means. The PM is not oblivious of this danger. After all, he is the most experienced politician around and has been through this before. But his approach seems to be that if not him then nothing and nobody. If the temple is not to be his let the pillars of the temple shake and come down. In other words, if after him the deluge comes so be it. This is nihilism at its best, and scorched earth tactics. Will they work?

This is not the end of democracy. Let us not be taken in by this alarmism. This is a chance to clean the stables and build a better democracy – one based on the ballot box but with a little less of dishonesty and crookedness. Can we avail this chance or are we fated to go around in circles, and then make a religion of cynicism?

Email: bhagwal63@gmail.com