Net tightens…sadly, no escaping Panama leaks

Islamabad diary

This is the writing on the wall         and even loyalist mediamen – coming into their colour and fully exposing themselves – and partisans of the Sharifian order would be recognising this, if not openly then in their heart of hearts. The outlook for the Sharifovs is not just grim. It is fast hurtling to the point of no return.

All because the evasions are not working and the charges thrown up by the leaks are just too damning to go away just like that. Go to the web and type in the words 1 Hyde Park and you’ll get all you need to know of the luxury flats in the possession of this poor-friendly family which, off and on, in the name of the people has been ruling Pakistan for the last 30 years.

The military we say has been running things here for much of the nation’s history. Very true. But no military ruler, not the toughest, has had as long a stint at the top as the Sharifovs. The Ayubs, Yahyas, etc, have come and gone. The Sharifovs have persevered on and on and done what no military ruler ever could achieve – not only lording it over the home stretch but acquiring a name for themselves as squires of Mayfair and the West End.

Musharraf has a flat on Edgeware Road and property in Dubai (if not elsewhere too). But let him eat his heart out. His holdings come nowhere near the towering achievements of the Sharifs. He is no squire of Mayfair.

And the Sharif scions, bright boys who hide their brightness well because from their bland countenances you would be hard put to guess financial or any other expertise, insist that all this has been gained through honest and assiduous toil. I will again say, just go to the net and type in 1 Hyde Park and you’ll get a fair estimate of all the honest toil that has gone into the making of this West End Empire, for it is little short of that.

But, since there is a limit to everything and even the Roman Empire eventually came to an end – otherwise Gibbon would have had no cause to write his Down and Fall – the days of wine and roses for the Sharifs are in danger of coming to an end because a) the questions raised by the leaks are too pressing and b) the Sharifs, furrow their brows and scratch their heads as they may, are unable to come up with any convincing answers.

So the crisis born out of this shot from the heavens – for the ISI or any sister agency has had no hand in creating this bombshell – is not just lingering and refusing to go away, it is becoming more serious by the day. The clouds are gathering and the horizon is darkening and the clocks are ticking and yet all that the Sharifs can think of is one futile evasion after the other.

For relief we have the periodic appearances of the PML-N’s regular comedy ensemble, comprising Abid Sher Ali, Zubair Omar and the inimitable duo of Daniyal Aziz and Talal Chaudry. We should be grateful to them. At least they lighten the grim national mood. But where is Pervaiz Rashid? He is not one to champion the virtues of reticence. Why has he gone relatively quiet?

But it takes no Clausewitz or similar genius to realise that this can’t go on forever. We could see as soon as the leaks came out that this would be a summer of anger and discontent. But it is already May and the height of summer is not far away. And the Holy Month beckoneth when the entire Republic will take a break and go into deep slumber, and you can bet your last rupee our man of steel and sariya and the Mayfair flats will repair to the Holy Land and there prostrate himself in the Holy Mosques.

Business is business and piety is piety. This is a bit like some of our Pakhtun brothers (I hasten to add, not all) who even if they are into smuggling – and along the western marches this remains an honourable calling – they are very particular about their prayers. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God what is God’s. Who says Pakistan is not a secular society?

This may be the agenda of the Sharifs, summed up in that quintessential Subcontinental term, ‘time-pass’. Even as they look nervous and depressed they still cling to the hope that time-pass will solve their problems. Alas, not everyone is onto the same agenda.

It takes not much clairvoyance to see that the army is worried and its patience is running out. This is not alarmism. It’s a plain reading of the circumstances. From Fata to Karachi and from there to internal Punjab, the army and agencies are up to their necks in the fight against radical Islamists – which is the proper definition and we should not shy away from it. The Sharifs’ foremost priority may be Mayfair flats – and offshore accounts to obscure their various and mind-boggling money trails – but army, PAF and agencies have other things on their minds.

Can a war-burdened military long tolerate a morally-tainted civilian dispensation? Democracy specialists should ask themselves this question. And in her next outburst, and there is no telling when her outbursts occur, let my friend Asma Jahangir answer it. If the Sharifs think they can dilly-dally indefinitely they are mistaken. The cup of patience will spill over and then all of us, including democracy specialists, will have ample time to put on sackcloth and go into prolonged mourning.

Let me put it more starkly. If the Sharifs are thinking that they can string everyone along until November when Gen Raheel Sharif’s term comes to an end and then sit back and bask in the luxury of appointing a Ziauddin Butt, some close replica of his, as next army chief, someone more to their way of thinking than the hyper-active Gen Raheel, they are living in a dream-world, chasing ghosts and shadows.

This is a different army, battle-hardened and new-spirited, which has rendered great sacrifices in the long war against religion-inspired terrorism. It is not likely to put up with this kind of nonsense.

Bhutto stretched out the negotiating game in 1977 to the point where nothing was left with him and the army marched in and upended the political scene. The Sharifs are similarly stretching out the reckoning. They face a hard choice: come clean about their murky offshore dealings, a virtual impossibility, or someone else will do the deciding for them. It is time we should all be rereading our Pakistani history.

Even in the United States the concentration of wealth in the top one percent has become a serious political issue. In the context of a country like Pakistan with its perpetual begging bowl held out to all and sundry, symbols of unconscionable wealth such as Mayfair properties are nothing short of obscene.

In Pakistan great wealth was always associated with commerce, industry and smuggling. The Sharifs blazed a new trail: associating great wealth with politics and power.

The Panama leaks, a thunderbolt from the skies, suggest that their luck is finally running out. But they are still finding it difficult to read the writing on the wall.

Email: bhagwal63@gmail.com