- And a paralysed House
It seems that the grapevine was wrong, for once, when it suggested that the government might take the foot of the gas a bit, so to speak, regarding its single minded pursuit of very selected accountability cases. That would have enabled everybody, at the very least, to sit down and finally get some legislation rolling. It would have been particularly welcome from the PTI point of view. Hamstrung as it is on the economic front, despite the friendly bailouts and landmark visits, some business in the House would have enabled it to fulfill some campaign promises and give people something to be happy about.
But news of Shahbaz Sharif being stopped from travelling abroad, to see his sick granddaughter, and the likelihood of his name being put on the Exit Control List (ECL) put things in perspective quickly enough. Everybody knows why the interior ministry was itching to put NAB’s request in action. That, coupled with the new of Sindh Assembly Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani’s arrest by the Bureau, for possessing assets beyond means and all that, shows that the temperature will stay raised for at least the immediate future.
Where, since we are after all a democracy, does all this leave the common man? Nobody can deny that Prime Minister Imran Khan’s promise of fighting corruption was one of the things that got him elected, but what’s the Average Joe going to do about accountability, etc, if his own existence gets squeezed? The government must create an atmosphere that allows the House to function. For that it will have to remember, above all things, the basic rule that everybody is innocent until proven guilty. As things stand, all the national assembly is good for is ugly mud slinging between its members. PM Imran Khan promised bringing a European style of functioning to our democracy. So far, it is ironically its effort to clamp down on corruption that has kept things from moving on. Hopefully better sense will still prevail and the government will do what it is supposed to do.
