Daring…missing link in the Pakistani character

Islamabad diary

We are a timid people and our governing class – from where come our leaders – is likewise timid, incapable of the grand or sweeping gesture. Iqbal exhorts us to emulate the eagle in the swoop and dash of its flight. For all the effect his words have had on the making of our national character he could have been preaching to the dead.

Jinnah was a great man but was he of us? He was another thing, cut from a different cloth, his outlook, his manners, his deportment completely different. In the politics of today he would not have survived.

Panamagate is a chance for us to make amends for the failures and wrongdoings of the past, a chance to clean the stables and make a fresh beginning. Why should whining voices in the media – our den of lions – take this to be an attack on democracy? Democracy is bigger than Nawaz Sharif or Imran Khan. If the Panama leaks shed light on murky corners democracy is strengthened not weakened.

We should have our eye on the main thing and not be distracted by side issues. When even our worthy president known more for his rabri dishes starts saying that the Panama revelations are “God-sent” you can sense where this whole thing is headed.

Tumbrils were the carts used to convey the condemned of the French Revolution to the guillotine. The question is who will set the tumbrils rolling in Pakistan? Who will start the process of accountability, fire the first shots? Not the ruling party whose members dare not open their lips. Not parliament which lacks singleness of purpose. Not the army because in our bitter school of experience we have known the selective and one-sided process that army-led accountability all too easily becomes.

This leaves My Lord the Chief Justice. History knocks at his door, and why should it not? Of what good is his suo motu jurisdiction if it does not come into play now? Is this not a matter of public interest?

Imagine if instead of Nawaz Sharif’s party the PPP had been in power and My Lord Chaudhry had been CJ. What drama would we not have witnessed by now? The tumbrils would have rolled and the sky would have been overcast…and doleful words would have come cascading from the bench.

This is not just a legalistic question. The paralysis in government brought on by the Panama leaks is affecting the nation’s business. PM and ruling party are distracted. There is nothing else on their minds. Waking and dreaming moments are taken up by the Panama leaks. Can this go on, last indefinitely? The PM has tried to evade the issue but nothing has worked. It is time now this impasse was broken so that the nation can return to normalcy. God knows there are other issues crying for attention.

Two questions, and not more, have to be asked of the PM. When were the flats bought and with what monies? And were those monies declared, in income tax returns and election declarations? If the PM and his lawyers can satisfy their lordships, that should be the end of the matter. The clouds will part and it should be back to business as usual.

But if wrongdoing and misstatements stand exposed then Articles 62 and 63 of the constitution should come into operation and let the axe of disqualification fall where it may. Parliament will still be there. The ruling party in all its glory will be there. The constitution will not be suspended and 111 Brigade will not have moved.

If Imran Khan’s offshore company – about which he should have made a disclosure sooner – falls within the web of disqualification so be it. If the Aleem Khans and Jahangir Tareens cannot come up with adequate explanations let them suffer the consequences.

Let Asif Zardari, even if sitting far away, not escape his reckoning. There never was any explanation for the 60 million dollars held in Swiss banks and there can be explanation now. Let us be rid of all these kleptocrats – for that is what it is, compulsive amassing.

And since a balance must be kept, this should also be the time to conclude the Asghar Khan case. Under orders of a former army chief money was distributed among a long line of recipients in the 1990 elections. Let the stay orders, if any, be vacated. Let the legalistic rigmarole come to an end. If that former army chief, Gen Beg, and his then spymaster who gave an affidavit about the distributed money are found guilty let them too suffer the consequences. And let the army not raise the banner of institutional interest. This will teach future army chiefs not to tread the same path.

So let the Supreme Court, pushing all other business to one side, take up these two things one after the other, the Panama leaks and the Asghar Khan case and let justice be quick and summary and ruthless. And let those who took money in those elections pay the price. The lancing of diseased boils is always good for the system.

Such an opportunity will not come again, at least not in a hurry. The N League has been adept at judicial politics, at dividing the Supreme Court as in the time of CJ Sajjad Ali Shah. But weakened by Panamagate, the N League is in no position to play that particular card again. Consider how the SC has dealt with the government’s ToRs to investigate the Panama revelations. Could any rebuke be sharper? This tells us of the weak wicket on which the government stands.

We can be sure about another thing. The army will be standing completely behind the SC if it takes up this matter in its suo motu jurisdiction. And there will be no storming of the SC, not in this climate. No one will dare.

So there is history waiting to be written. Will anyone take up this challenge? Everything is ready…the setting, the atmosphere, even the lighting and in the distance the sound of muffled drums. A tattoo is playing because as even the rabri-fame president has reminded us this is not a man-devised crisis. It has fallen from the skies.

The president may have had something else in mind. He may have been thinking of Imran Khan, who knows? But I can bet anything that in the paranoid atmosphere prevailing in the PM House his remarks in Hyderabad would not have been liked. Someone could even have muttered, Et tu Brute? Despite the fact that no distance could be greater than between Brutus and President Mamnoon Hussain.

This is not 1977 when the right wing and religious parties took to the streets against Bhutto. This is closer to 1993 when there was a deadlock between the then president Ishaq and the then prime minister Nawaz Sharif, wheels of government grinding to a halt and the country in a state of paralysis. Gen Kakar then intervened to break the deadlock. Their lordships have it in their power to play the role of Gen Kakar, intervention with a judicial twist, in line with the constitution, with the added advantage of taking the first steps to clean the national stables.

I am writing this before the PM’s address to the National Assembly. Here’s a guess: he’ll be himself and won’t rise above his limitations. On TV as the leadership sat discussing the address, depression was writ large on their faces…not a good sign.

Email: bhagwal63@gmail.com