The abyss stares into you
Do always expect a PML(N) presser after one by the PTI. Because it is corruption and financial impropriety that the latter delves into and in that, the PML(N) sees its space being encroached upon. The PPP having long given up even trying to present a holier than thou image, it is the League that always styled itself as the party of clean and impeccable financial behaviour.
The odds, however, are stacked against it, as far as media discourse is concerned. This is but natural; the PTI has never been in power, the League many times over and its leading family is one of the richest in the country. But a lot of the allegations against the PML(N) are clearly false like, to point one out, that its chief pays only Rs 5000 as income tax. Similarly, a lot of the allegations against PTI Chief Imran Khan do have merit, like his not too clear tax records. Tax evasion, said PML(N) leader Chaudhry Nisar, is tax evasion, whether one is in government or not.
This doesn’t, of course, mean to absolve the League from any crime. For industrialists to join politics is their democratic right. For them to want to grow their businesses when they are still in power, however, is not. The scale of the business that the Sharifs run is huge and knowledge of governmental decisions beforehand is a greater competitive advantage than competitive rates themselves. It is not sharp business, as League spin-doctors were fond of calling it in their second federal term, but clear conflicts of interest.
Financial impropriety covers the whole of society and tax evasion is the norm rather than the exception. No one is an honest Joe here. The malaise covers the military, where institutionalised corruption will ensure that even clean officers who make it to a general have an end worth the career corporate executives can only dream of. Ditto for the judiciary, where the earnings of legal practices run by family members cannot really be touched.
It will depend, really, on the strictness of the standards involved. Corruption, governmental or otherwise, is an ill that needs to be combated. But who will cast the first stone?