Alhamdulillah?

How can a true believer say, “Praise be to God” after eating a ton of swine flesh? 

This is what leaves me flabbergasted. A son of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif repeatedly saying ‘Alhamdulillah’ after admitting on television that the Mayfair flats are ours without a shred of evidence about where the funds to purchase them came from? Such admission lays the onus of proof on him and his family, for unless he clarifies where the money came from and how, the flats will not be considered kosher. Why not say “Praise be to God that we have risen from rags to riches after successfully stealing so much”? At least that would be more factual and truthful. The corrupt drag God into everything to justify their illicit wealth.

I ask the politicians in opposition: is your real purpose to save the system that benefits you or to save the country? They are trapped in this contradiction: how to get rid of Nawaz Sharif and save the system at the same time?

Pakistan and I are in much the same condition, though Pakistan’s condition is much worse. After some of the Panama Papers were released, I felt sick at heart. Not that I didn’t know all that, but now the proof was staring me in the face. Only one name revealed surprised me; the rest one already knew about but had no proof, only hearsay. Being sick at heart and mind can paralyse one’s thought process: writers block some call it. My beloved country is in much the same condition: paralysed, trapped in a cul de sac, the only movement being backward to square one or downward into the dark abyss where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth and seemingly no way out because our civilian and military guides are all rived with self-preservation contradictions, not with preserving the country because of which they are what they are. Pygmies frightened of their own shadows, like the lion in the Wizard of Oz. Now you understand why I have often been absent in the last few weeks? I just didn’t feel like writing anything. “What to say in the face of such stupidity and pigheadedness?” I asked myself.

I ask the politicians in opposition: is your real purpose to save the system that benefits you or to save the country? They are trapped in this contradiction: how to get rid of Nawaz Sharif and save the system at the same time? The more Sharif stays obdurate the greater the chances that the system will go with him along with many politicians. Repeat: if this decrepit, man-eating, bloodsucking system goes, many politicians will go with it: that is their fearsome danger.

What is there to be investigated when it has already been investigated by the ICIJ? Do you think that the ICIJ journalists and the German newspaper would even have had the temerity to release and publish such information without doing a full and thorough investigation first

Things change rapidly because Nawaz Sharif’s gang has panicked. They are incoherent, inchoate, shrill and abusive. Panic leads to irrationality. I had written more than half this article when news came that the Chief Justice of Pakistan announced that he would not set up a Judicial Commission that both Nawaz Sharif and the opposition were hankering after. The scenario changed instantaneously. You never know, by the time you read this it could have changed again. The CJP did the right thing: indirectly refusing to establish the Commission because he wanted the court not to get trapped in the political quagmire. The Supreme Court is not an investigation agency; it interprets the Constitution and gives judgments. In any case, the government’s Terms of Reference (TORs) were too wooly and would have taken years because, left unsaid was that government wanted to divert the Supreme Court into our history of corruption and buy time by diverting the investigation into irrelevance and delaying the inevitable for as long as possible. The Supreme Court advised the government and the opposition to get together and form mutually agreed TORs. Have you ever heard such nonsense? The accused being asked to participate in forming the TORs under which he is to be investigated? Even worse was the government making the TORs itself – the accused being a judge in his own cause determining how he is to be investigated. Now the opposition has agreed to the other nonsensical thing: getting into negotiations with the accused to make the TORs. Makes one want to weep.

What is there to be investigated when it has already been investigated by the ICIJ? Do you think that the ICIJ journalists and the German newspaper would even have had the temerity to release and publish such information without doing a full and thorough investigation first, which included forensic audits and chasing money trails? They had to protect their backs. The ICIJ has already said that they will share the information with any government that asks for it. Well, stop wasting time and ask them.

With no chance of the prime minister taking the logical route of resigning and saving Pakistan, he may be forced to resign, which he would prefer to anyway for then he could paint himself as a political martyr yet again after being forced out because of his own suicidal stupidity. Suicidal tendencies are on full display for all to see.

By next Sunday there might well be a sea change in the situation yet again. Whatever it is, I hope that it is logical and good for Pakistan.