- Games politicians play
So former president Asif Zardari now smells a plot to roll back the 18th amendment; his ‘party’s gift to the nation’. That has happened, incidentally, just as talk of corruption cases building around him and his friends is seemingly turning into reality. And critics are already finding parallels between Nawaz’s response (to his corruption trial) and the posture Zardari is taking – giving a political colour to purely financial matters. If you asked Nawaz around the Panama verdict, he was chucked by ‘aliens’ because of his pro-democracy, pro-peace credentials. Just as Zardari now says people he even talks to on the phone are being picked up because, somehow, everybody has a problem with the 18th amendment.
Government spokesmen, on the other hand, are pretty confident about evidence against Zardari; hence Information Minister Fawad Chaudhary’s recent tweets that the former president should be meeting his lawyers instead of friends, and any proposed anti-government agitation would have to be controlled from jail, no less. And, quite naturally, they accuse the opposition of politicising an otherwise purely legal matter. Yet is it really only the opposition that is playing unhealthy politics?
Why, for example, does information that should flow from FIA and NAB usually come from twitter feeds of senior PTI ministers, particularly Fawad Chaudhary? If, as repeatedly advised in this space, the burden of evidence is so overwhelming why does the government need to go out of its way and appear increasingly partisan? It would be far better to just step aside and let the law take its course. Yet there is increasing noise about 50 or so opposition leaders headed to the slammer in the near future. Expecting the opposition not to react in such circumstances, even unite (as it did in the by-election), would not be the smartest thing to do. The government already has its hands full with the economy. It does not need to pick unnecessary fights. At the end of the day, ordinary people continue to suffer because of the games senior politicians play whether in or out of government.