How the leaders of the people mistreat the law of the land
Politics is tricky business as we well know. But politics turns ugly when it comes to weak democracies. It gets appalling when it comes to a country like Pakistan where corrupt democratic order and successive military interventions have muddled the waters entirely.
As they say politics and corruption go hands in hand, one can understand the nexus between the two is inseparable. But things go beyond repair when political parties submit to family dynasties.
This is what happening in Pakistan. Over the years, two major political parties of Pakistan — PPP and PML(N) — have turned into a literal family business. Politicians in both parties have become subservient to the families of Bhuttos and Sharifs.
Both Bhuttos and Sharifs have ruled Pakistan since 1970s one-by-one but both have failed to introduce even a slight improvement in the lives of the people.
Rather, there has been a vertical decline in the lives of the people at large. And this is happening in the 21st century which is otherwise called “The century of the East”. Despite the fact that all the countries of the region are growing at around seven per cent, Pakistan is lagging far behind at 2.5 per cent. Even countries like Bangladesh are far ahead in terms of growth and economic stability.
The reason has been simple — the ruling families in both parties are corrupt to the core and feel no need to be answerable to anyone. Gradually and surely, these two families have not only amassed unchecked wealth, they have also shifted it overseas, depriving their country of economic activity.
It is also a fact that successive interactions by military to help revive the economic wheel have also failed to deliver and each time the military made an intervention, both the political families have played ‘victim card’ to woo sympathies of the masses who are poor, ignorant and carry dogmatic approaches.
The situation worsened after Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif struck a deal named ‘charter of the democracy’ back in 2005-6, pledging to promote each other’s cause against military interventions. Later it was proved that the deal had nothing to do about democracy and rather it was aimed at protecting each other’s corruption.
Hence, corruption has become the business of the day as no government is ready to hold the previous government accountable.
Lord Acton once said, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you super add the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.”
This is exactly what has been happening in Pakistan for decades — the bad but influential lot is making a mockery of the laws as connivance between the corrupt elite goes on unabated.
It is no secret that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has been facilitating the corrupt practice by his peers by turning a blind eye in the name of ‘charter of democracy’, though the country is paying a very high cost for this so-called charter.
Though PTI Chairman Imran Khan has been accusing Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and former President Asif Ali Zardari for being in an unwritten ‘illicit deal’ to facilitate each other escape the law, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan recently admitted of such a deal existing between his ‘beloved’ prime minister and PPP’s Syed Khurshid Shah.
When Mr Shah responded to accusations of Nisar in a press conference, Defence Production Minister Rana Tanveer Hussain jumped into the fray, demanding that Shah provide evidence against the concessions sought by him from the PML(N) government. However, Mr Shah, Ch Nisar and Tanveer adopted a mysterious silence when their respective leaders intervened and the matter was hushed up silently, without any of the main characters having the moral courage to take the matter to its logical end.
But this did not happen for the first time. The country saw another such episode last year when Chaudhry Nisar blamed PPP stalwart Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan for seeking undue favours in an LPG contract from the petroleum ministry. Mr Ahsan strongly reacted to the accusation, warning that if Nisar would take him to the court, he would take him to the cleaners. Even then the premier intervened and the matter was resolved as if it never happened.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has long been resisting pressure from the military for action against the top guns of not only the PPP. The premier has also been blamed for shielding top leaders of MQM, including Altaf Hussain, which has irked the military leadership.
Analysts believe the prime minister is perhaps still carrying his longtime hatred against the military for a bloodless coup staged by General Pervez Musharraf in 1999.
While the premier doesn’t leave any opportunity of taking credit for restoration of peace in the port city of Karachi — which is otherwise an achievement by the army — Mr Sharif is adamant not to allow action against any of his fellow politicians.
The escape of Sindh Minister Sharjeel Memon and some bureaucrats of Sindh government allegedly involved with corrupt practices in Sindh Building Control Authority and ‘China cutting’ is another evidence to this effect.
While there were many news items alleging recovery of illicit money from a close aide of Mr Memom, the federal government did not order action against him until he left the country.
However, once Mr Memon left for the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the interior minister was fast enough in putting his name on the Exit Control List (ECL), perhaps asking him never to return. It is no secret that Mr Memon was working for Bilawal House.
The timing of the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) strike has also raised eyebrows among powerful circles and people at the helm see this crisis as a theatre created to shift media attention from the revelations made by notorious gangster Uzair Jan Baloch.
The establishment believes the PIA fiasco was ‘staged’ by the top leadership of both the parties as the expose likely to be made by Uzair Jan Baloch might not only help implicate some top leaders of the PPP but some top guns of the ruling PML(N) may also come under the scanner.
Almost same tactics were used when former petroleum minister and a close aide to Mr Zardari, Dr Asim Hussain, was captured by Sindh Rangers. Though the doctor has confessed to treating and financing militants from banned terrorist outfits, the Sindh government is still shielding him, which reflects the fact that the man had full backing from the top PPP leadership.
PPP President Asif Ali Zardari is busy nowadays in the United States of America (USA) in a bid to woo some low-ranked officials of the state department and the US establishment to help save him from the grind of the Karachi operation.
PPP leaders say Mr Zardari and his son, PPP Chairman Bilawal Zardari, made good use of the Breakfast Prayer meeting with President Obama to lobby for their rescue. Former ambassador to US Husain Haqqani is their lead lobbyist these days and he had arranged the meetings of the senior and junior Zardari with sitting and former members of Congress, think-tank members and other influential lobbyists.
But the matter needing attention is how Mr Asif Zardari fled the country despite so many reports of illicit money received by Bilawal House from gangsters and bureaucrats? Why these allegations were never probed and why the federal agencies were reluctant to intervene in time?
The civilian agencies probing the corruption cases, led by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), have also been very soft over the politicians and bureaucrats allegedly involved in corrupt practices. Though NAB has been investigating corruption charges against top PPP leaders, nothing tangible has been achieved yet. Even some PML(N) leaders, including Punjab ministers Rana Sanaullah and Rana Mashood, have been investigated, but there is nothing on ground yet.
Plato once said, “Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws”. This is exactly what is happening in Pakistan as the illicit alliance between the corrupt goes unchecked.
The lawyers of crook politicians and criminal gangs are out to save their masters and courts are facilitating this process too. Prosecution is either unskilled or its top leadership is compromised.
Jarod Kintz said once, “laws are chains to the many, and whips to the few.” So this is what happening in Pakistan. If you are rich, you may commit any crime and escape the law.
But if you are filthy rich, you have got a license to loot and plunder and no one would dare touch you.
While the federal and provincial governments are busy in making money and escaping the law, I remind one quote by a Portuguese scholar José Maria de Eça de Queirós who once said, “Politicians and diapers should be changed frequently and all for the same reason.”
