close
Friday March 29, 2024

Sharif family faced accountability for third time

By Tariq Butt
February 27, 2017

ISLAMABAD: Regardless of the impending judgment of the Supreme Court on petitions against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his three children in regard to offshore companies and London apartments, the inclusive questioning of the first family for weeks turned out to be its ruthless accountability for the third time to be precise since early nineties.

Once again, the Sharif family was subjected, in the words of its pungent detractors specifically the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), to an unprecedented “search” in the highest court in which even its deceased patriarch, Mian Mohammad Sharif, was repeatedly mentioned and several piercing questions were fired about his business dealings that he had done during his life.

Never before in Nawaz Sharif’s intense accountability by different regimes were his children, Maryam, Hussain and Hassan, asked to explain certain aspects relating to business. What happened now was the first of its kind in this sense. They faced many sharp and painful questions.

The conclusion of hearings by the Supreme Court marked the completion of matchless, unheard of ‘search’ of three generations of the Sharif family. Now the matter is in the hands of judges to decide one way or the other. It will be clear from the judgment whether or not the ‘frisking’ led to the exoneration of the defendants. But it was evident that all sorts of questions were directed at the Sharif family that it never even thought of since it came in politics back in early eighties. The queries were also posed about its businesses when none of its member was even in politics and the entire empire was single-handedly run by the elder Sharif and when his sons were not much involved in his concerns.

The Sharif family underwent brutal accountability during the tenures of the Benazir Bhutto governments when crude attempts were made to stifle its business, inflicting heavy losses to it. Even once, Mian Sharif was sent behind the bars after the elderly man was arrested in an extremely callous manner from his Lahore office and was held incommunicado for some days.After that, Pervez Musharraf’s dictatorial regime employed every wicked method to squeeze the business of the Sharif family. Even Nawaz Sharif, Shahbaz Sharif and several others were arraigned in a phoney plane hijacking case and imposed heavy sentences, which became defunct after their departure from Pakistan.

This time the accountability of the Sharif family is also very elaborate and is totally different – it has been carried out not during the government of Nawaz Sharif’s opponents, but it is being conducted when he himself is the prime minister. The highest court of Pakistan, which enjoys universal public confidence and acclaim, has done his accountability. The premier was dragged in the proceedings despite the fact that it is established beyond an iota of doubt that his name doesn’t figure in the Panama Papers disclosures which were the basis of this case.