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Tuesday March 19, 2024

Party funds

By our correspondents
August 20, 2017

Questions of the accountability of politicians are not just limited to personal finance. The sources of finance of major political parties are an equally important subject. Since November 2014, the PTI has been facing serious questions regarding the sources of funds received by the party after one of its founding members, Akbar S Babar, filed a case in the ECP against his own party. The case argues that the PTI has used finances from dubious foreign sources and has also indulged in money-laundering tactics to transfer money to Pakistan. The ECP has issued 21 notices to the PTI since the case was initiated in 2014 but the party has continued to refuse to submit details of the bank accounts it uses to gather foreign funding. The complaint has himself claimed to have submitted most of the relevant evidence to the ECP and now the ECP has given the PTI a deadline of Sep 7 to submit all funding details. According to political observers, the damage to the party in such a case could be rather grave. That transparency is essential when it comes to foreign sources of funding is obvious considering the possible questions of influence and threat to the country’s stability. And, indeed, it should not be hard for any political party to provide a list of who has funded it and how much funding they have provided.

It seems the PTI has not taken matters pertaining to its own wellbeing and financial transparency seriously. This seems to be part of a pattern. Questions asked about the PTI – from within or outside – are usually met with efforts at shut-up calls. In this particular case, the PTI’s lawyer has taken the position that the ECP needs to discontinue the case on the premise that a similar case is also being heard in the Supreme Court – in which the ECP is a respondent. The PTI had said that the party was open to answering questions related to transparency. If they were to act on that, it would also be a politically advantageous move. Otherwise, it would not be unwarranted how a party asking for across-the-board accountability is not itself open to accountability. A double standard has been at the very core of the PTI approach to politics: everyone must be made accountable – expect us. Most of the allegations against the PTI have come from inside. Whether it is the fiasco over its internal elections, allegations of corruption and nepotism in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, allegations of collusion with outside and non-political elements, allegations of financial misappropriation or a culture of sexual harassment – all of these have come from some of its most ardent supporters and leaders. These are not issues that the PTI can avoid by shouting down and abusing its opponents. A better way would be to be as transparent as possible before the relevant institutions and, above all, the Pakistani public since, tight now, it is the PTI’s commitment to transparency that is at question.