Sharif is no potential absconder
Nawaz Sharif has continued to appear before the accountability court since last September to face the references filed against him. In between he visited London to look after his ailing wife and spent a few weeks there only to return promptly when summoned by the court. As presently his name is not on the ECL he could have easily left the country if he wanted to. While one may strongly disagree with Sharif on a number of issues, and criticize him for numerous acts of commission and omission, the former Prime Minister cannot be accused of cowardice. It should have been amply clear by now to his rivals that he is not going to leave the field open for them. The ongoing debate on whether to put his name on the ECL is therefore altogether frivolous.
Sharif has already been disqualified from holding public office for an unspecified period. The worst that can happen to him is landing in the jail. While he says he is ready to face it, there is every reason to believe that the President would pardon him if the PML-N were to ask for it. Article 45 of the Constitution empowers the President “to grant pardon, reprieve and respite, and to remit, suspend or commute any sentence passed by any court, tribunal or other authority.” A President in the recent past pardoned a loyalist who had been convicted on corruption charges without blinking an eye. He then appointed him interior minister. The party concerned would therefore have no moral ground to condemn it if the same concession was granted to Nawaz Sharif
Nawaz Sharif has been PM of the country thrice. Those demanding to put his name on the ECL are driven by an impulse to humiliate him. Instead of refusing to place Sharif’s name on the ECL, the Interior Minister has taken resort to trickery by introducing an unfair and unworkable bureaucratic procedure for putting names on the ECL. If the present stuck-in-the-mud cabinet was to decide the fate of each one of the 600 cases, most of the criminals put on the list would have left within 24 hours of the introduction of Ahsan Iqbal’s new procedure.
It is a shame that the subject of putting the former PM on ECL is being considered by the concerned minister at all.That he does not want to carry the can alone makes it even more embarassing.If he is put on ECL for whom will the bell toll next. Enough is enough!
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