Islamabad diary
Offshore companies are not into philanthropy or charity. They are there for hiding wealth, dodging taxes and providing a respectable cover for money-laundering. Every babe in the woods understands this, or should.
So why in Pakistan are we going around in circles and behaving like a bunch of second-class lawyers, asking for convoluted proof when the naked proof, in all its starkness, is there before our eyes?
The Sharifs have wealth stashed abroad in offshore companies. They have very expensive properties in London, bought much before enterprising Hussain Nawaz set himself up as an offshore salesman in 2006. This requires no forensic audit, no Sherlock Holmes sleuthing. The facts as listed in the P Leaks are so strong that the Sharifs are in no position to deny them.
They are doing the next best thing: protesting their innocence, appearing pious – as the prime minister did in his TV address – and throwing a blanket of confusion over the entire issue. The prime minister spoke of a judicial commission to look into the allegations against his family. On second viewing it turns out to be an inquiry of sorts to be headed by a retired, if you please, Supreme Court judge.
To further discount the illusion that the Sharifs were about to put their heads on the block, the very next day came the straight-faced clarification that the said commission would look not just into the Sharif offshore allegations but into the cases of all the 200 odd Pakistanis – businessmen, industrialists, and the like – whose names appear in the P Leaks.
It was also said that the commission would set its own time limit for the probe. This makes it a safe bet that the inquiry will go on for at least the next five years. As stalling tactics go this is excellent. At the same time it will be interesting to see which retired eminence lends the charisma and colour of his personality to this pantomime.
Call the Sharifs escape artists: they have been able to get away with so much – the Model Town shootings would have felled any other government, the Asghar Khan case had it involved not PML-N luminaries – including PM and talented brother, First Servant of Punjab – but the PPP, it would have destroyed its government.
The Sharifs have something greater to their credit, a trophy ranking high in their hall of fame: the storming of the Supreme Court. They got away with that too. Imagine if a Sindh-led government had attempted the same audacity. It would have been roasted alive.
If the P Leaks had been homegrown they would have been swatted like a fly. But their international dimension makes them problematic…hence the desperate efforts to ride out the ensuing storm.
To divert attention from the main issue the PML-N’s usual attack team headed by Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid – for whom I feel a touch of sympathy because he is always showing his loyalty above and beyond the call of duty – is turning its guns on Imran Khan. And we have the dust being raised by the judicial inquiry, or whatever name we give it. The eyewash is thus on and it’s safe to say it will get stronger.
The Sharifs are past masters at both denial and obfuscation. About receiving ISI money in the 1990 elections, Nawaz Sharif says he remembers nothing…although gallantly offers to return the money with interest, if the charge is proved. Shahbaz Sharif says he knew nothing about the Model Town massacre…although the police action lasted for hours in his own neighbourhood. Hussain Nawaz says the Sharif property business in London was financed by the sale of their steel mill in Jeddah when the London flats were bought much before the Sharifian exile to the holy land.
Maryam Nawaz heroically tweets: “Despite no allegations of wrongdoing or illegality, PM Sharif presents himself and family for accountability.” The slow-footed and toothless inquiry commission headed by a retired judge is her idea of accountability, and she challenges: “Now prove or apologise.” The disclosures were from the P Leaks not anyone in Pakistan. So who should apologise?
Tina Durrani, married to SS, has been the most honest of all. Offshore accounts, she tweets, whether legal or not are unethical, and that is worse than a crime. She thus manages to say in a few words what others struggle to comprehend. This is unlikely to impress Nawazites. Et tu Calpurnia? they will glower and say.
In the midst of all this Nawaz Sharif suddenly remembers the existence of the National Security Committee of the cabinet, which last met 17 months ago. We saw the pictures yesterday – the military chiefs, the civilian lineup and the PM presiding – conveying the impression of a PM seized with grave matters. Were the military chiefs fooled?
What the P Leaks do is to confirm what most Pakistanis know, or at least suspect: that the national stables are chockfull of muck and no one has a monopoly on corruption…it runs across the board, all sections of the political or governing elite complicit in it. The PML-N’s reaction to the disclosures confirms another truth: that the Pakistani governing class is incapable of self-correction.
So the questions that rise to the surface: Is a corrupt governing class part of the natural order of things? Is our destiny incurable? Or is there a way out?
Under the present system there is no way out because whichever way the dice are rolled, whatever stratagem is employed, the same offshore elites presiding over national fortunes, PML-N or PPP, come out on top. This is a cycle repeating itself endlessly. National renewal is impossible unless this cycle is broken.
Terrorism’s grip was broken when the army short-circuited the political process and took matters into its own hands. Breaking the political cycle whose fruits are corruption and incompetence requires a similar kind of intervention, with the army – not yesterday’s army but the battle-tested army of today – acting as chief agent of change.
When soldiers and officers are laying down their lives for the defence and integrity of the country but the political class shows little capacity for real leadership, what other conclusion is possible?
But generalisations are not enough. How precisely to define this intervention?
If Pakistan is to march towards the sunny uplands – the echo of a phrase much beloved of Churchill – the army has to push from behind the scenes, forcefully and with the Supreme Court in step with it, to bring about constitutional changes envisaging a president directly elected by the people and with control over defence and foreign policy – a la France, a la United States, a la China. Someone with popular backing and the confidence of the armed forces who can a) ensure that the gains of Zarb-e-Azb are not reversed, and b) who is capable of leading the effort to clean up the national stables and reform Pakistani society.
The Panama Leaks give us this opportunity. It is not a conspiracy spun by the ISI. It is a gift from the stars which exposes the corrupt contours of Pakistani democracy and thus is also a summons to action. Do we make something of this opportunity or spend the rest of our lives lamenting this lost chance?
Email: bhagwal63gmail.com