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Friday March 29, 2024

Sharifs to face courts come what may

By Tariq Butt
October 20, 2017

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ISLAMABAD: Despite their pronounced strong protest against the loaded accountability process, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, his daughter Maryam and son-in-law Capt (R) Safdar have bowed to it.

Since the start of the Panama case, the Sharifs are yet to get even a minor relief from any judicial forum although they have frequently approached superior courts with a variety of pleas.

In the heart of their hearts, the Sharifs are sure, and this is also evident from their public assertions, that they would not get justice. But still they have decided to be part of the judicial proceedings so that they are not taunted for skipping hearings.

In contrast, former military ruler Pervez Musharraf has deliberately been jumping the judicial process since long, and nobody in the state apparatus is even slightly inclined to take any credible initiative to make him surrender to the constitutional and legal calls.

The Sharifs’ indictment by an Islamabad accountability court and Musharraf’s consistent absence from different courts which want him to be before them once again starkly reminded the discriminatory application of law although according to the universal maxim and the Constitution, everybody is equal before the law. It has been proved in the instant case that this principle is selectively invoked in Pakistan.

This also diverted attention to the glaring difference between the politicians, the Sharifs, and former dictator, Musharraf, to the judicial process. The first set has to be part of it otherwise it will suffer politically. The Sharifs’ popular politics demands that they should obey the law to tell all and sundry that they are not running away from their trial. The former dictator, who is scared of consequences, would never embark upon this trajectory. Politically, he will not lose anything for having no roots among the masses.

There was nothing new in the charge-sheet that accountability court judge Muhammad Bashir read out to the accused on Thursday. All kinds of wild allegation leveled by the six-member Panama Joint Investigation Team (JIT) figured in it. Had its accusations been trustworthy and depended, the Supreme Court would have certainly relied on them and convicted Nawaz Sharif. Instead, it disqualified him on the basis of non-declaration of an unwithdrawn salary that he had not taken from his son’s Dubai-based company.

The JIT’s unsubstantiated claims were that the trust deed signed by Maryam and Hussain about the London apartments was not genuine, Calibri font was used when it had not been commercially available, fake documents were produced by them etc., surfaced in the JIT findings.

However, if its report was so truthful, meriting sentencing of the accused, why a National Accountability Bureau (NAB) team has been sent to London to collect evidence against the Sharifs? It is a unique trial in the sense that collection of proofs is ending.

The partiality and bias of the JIT, whose findings have been made the basis of the references and the subsequent charge-sheets, was an open secret since word go. However, its report was taken very seriously by the five-member bench that had adjudicated upon the Panama case. The protests and cries of the Sharif family over the JIT’s one-sidedness and unfairness were never attached any credence by the relevant forums.

There is no denying and even those staunchly opposed to the former premier also agree that the intensification of the accountability process against the Sharifs will not shave off Nawaz Sharif’s popular appeal. Rather, it will add to his political standing and vote-bank. This is feared by his adversaries, who keep devising their strategies to offset such effects.

The wishful thinking that Nawaz Sharif stay put in London is misplaced and fallacious because he will be shortly returning to Pakistan to appear before the accountability process every time he will be summoned. He is unlikely to be away from the homeland for political reasons. His presence will infuse a new vigour in his party and help keep it united. Regardless of the proceedings held in courts, the appearance of the members of the Sharif family before them dominate all those days.

Even otherwise after the July 28 judgment, it is Nawaz Sharif, whose actions and assertions are setting the agenda of discussions in hundreds of TV talk shows every day. Imran Khan’s antics have been pushed to the background. For over four years, he took over the noisy chattering current affairs programmes on the electronic media.