Sharif’s two-pronged policy on JIT

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his confidants have adopted a clear two-pronged policy viz-a-viz the Panama Joint Investigation Team (JIT) – appear before it as per the judicial order and legal and constitutional calls, but attack it severely at the political level, showcasing its bias and partiality.

At no stage has any member of the Sharif family defied the JIT’s summons to appear before it, meaning that everyone of them regardless of his official status has bowed before it as per the order of the Supreme Court. There was not even minor foot-dragging by anyone to avoid any intervention by the apex court.

The prime minister himself, his sons Hussain and Hassan, his son-in-law Capt (retd) Safdar, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, his cousin Tariq Shafi and their family friend Javed Kayani presented themselves before the JIT as many times as it wanted them to be to satisfy itself. This was the judicial and legal part that they met and faced the investigators behind closed doors.

But on the political front, they took on the JIT. The government has kept this field hot by lambasting the JIT so that people are told with certainty beforehand that the report of a body that is heavily loaded against the Sharif family will not be acceptable for not being fair and transparent.

What the premier said in London on Friday night was hitherto the strongest denunciation of the six-member JIT, already mired in a deep controversy, since its creation on May 5. He called it a “joke, comedy circus” that is working in the name of accountability of the Sharif family but its process has nothing to do with the accountability.

How comprehensively Nawaz Sharif is anguished and tormented by the JIT’s inquest was amply reflected from his hard-hitting comments, targeting the probe body. He repeatedly dubbed it as a comedy circus.

However, he also talked about some bitter political realities and conspiracies hatched against him, which are no secret. There is hardly any disagreement anywhere across the political landscape that since he will be unstoppable in the forthcoming 2018 general elections and is poised to emerge with a better majority compared to his 2013’s tally, roadblocks have to be placed before the electoral fight to prevent him from achieving a major victory; and he has to be damaged through various machinations.

Apparently with this hard fact in view, the prime minister scoffed at the JIT and said that it had been formed as a political project to discredit him through a legal stamp in order to engineer the political landscape in favour of his opponents, who lost to him in 2013 elections and were headed for the same fate in 2018 and attempts were afoot to help such elements who had no chance through fair elections. “This ‘tamasha’ is against one family; our enemies know their politics has failed, therefore, they have weaved a new conspiracy.”

Undoubtedly, plots have been and are being made every now and then to politically harm and whittle down the prime minister’s authority but he is sure that “conspiracies” would not be allowed to succeed.

Without naming anybody, Nawaz Sharif stated that the kind of people who have appeared before the JIT as witnesses are his worst political enemies and this JIT is asking them for help. “Now, you can understand and see through what this JIT is looking for,” he said and alluded to the fishing expedition the team has embarked upon over the past five weeks to get some kind of proof and evidence against the Sharif family.

A few  hours before the prime minister’s remarks, his son-in-law made a severe dig on the JIT after his five-hour appearance before it and said accountability of Pakistan ideology was being conducted and questions were coming from outside.

“It is not accountability of Nawaz Sharif but Pakistan ideology as the Panama case was not against him but against the ideology of Pakistan and against a leader that made Pakistan a nuclear power; the one who made motorways and steered Pakistan away from darkness.

 The Panama case is against such a person who wants to change the fate of the people of Pakistan by constructing motorways, who wants to break the begging bowl, who wants to make an end to darkness (power load-shedding) and who wants to change the system in this country.”