What Is Nawaz Sharif up to?
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada
Every time that I open a new Microsoft Word page to write this column it presents me with its standard Calibri font, which I quickly switch over to my favorite font, Arial
However, ‘Princess’ Maryam Nawaz, believed by the PM’s fawning acolytes and minions to be his heir-apparent and being groomed to one day succeed him, wasn’t, apparently, discerning like me. So she, or whoever wrote that counterfeit and bogus affidavit on her behalf regarding her status as the purported principal beneficiary of the two off-shore companies named in the Panama Papers, didn’t mind sticking to the Calibri font.
Of course she wouldn’t have known that what was supposed to be an affidavit prepared in 2006 was written on the Calibri font launched in the global market only in 2007.
Princesses aren’t the ones expected to strain their pretty head about the date of birth of a Word font; they often don’t remember their own birth day or, at the very least, not exactly the year they were born to, for good reason.
So what’s such a big deal if Princess Maryam botched the affidavit submitted to the JIT that was trying to put together all the loose ends and strands of her macabre family’s myriad narratives in an effort to nail her inglorious and ignoble daddy?
I bet none of the smart dudes in Nawaz’ gang could have imagined what a terrible faux pas their Princess Maryam was getting into when she so proudly flaunted her 2006 (presumed) affidavit of innocence and non-culpability before JIT, whose members were alert to the fraud and quickly unraveled it.
That Maryam, supposedly the good daughter to her floundering and erratic father, tried to spin wool over the eyes of JIT has now been established beyond any reasonable shade of doubt. She had the gall—or whoever was representing her—to use a Word font, Calibri, which was still-born in 2006.
Technology has done in Maryam Nawaz, as far as her ambition to lead PML (N) and one day become PM herself –is concerned. She has been caught on a flat foot trying to hoodwink the team probing her ignoble family’s, particularly its patriarch’s, shenanigans and antics in the realm of big business.
Trumped by technology, Maryam may have inadvertently reached the end of the road in her short-lived political and public career. Sycophants may have fed her dreams of glory, a la Indira Gandhi or Benazir Bhutto. But politics has its own trap doors to devour an ambitious traveler’s passage, prematurely. Maryam has only herself to blame for her early political demise.
Einstein may have had the vision of a clairvoyant when he warned that the day technology overtakes our humanity would be the birth day of a generation of idiots.
But here, in the context of the Panama Gate scandal with Nawaz Sharif and his thieving children at its epicenter, we are witnessing a spectacle of grand larceny and crime committed with total impunity and disregard for fundamental maxims of good conduct and probity expected of those saddled with the cloak of leadership.
Shame is a word not found in the lexicon of the Sharif family. Howls of anger and frustration emanating from the Sharif camp—clan and cronies in it together—proves beyond any shade of doubt that the JIT has done a marvelous job in painstakingly peeling the wraps off the litany of lies, concoctions and fabrications flaunted by Nawaz himself and his devious brood of children.
In even half civilized and semi-democratic polities around the globe leaders quietly put in their resignation the moment a finger is raised about their integrity. But not so, not at all so, with Nawaz Sharif; he and his cabal of self-serving charlatans have the gall to call JIT a farce. Nawaz has simply laughed off the idea of stepping down with dignity.
So what’s he up to, is the question that naturally comes to mind?
Is he behaving like a camel caught in the middle of a desert storm and hoping that the whole thing would blow over him?
Is he playing for time, hoping that no matter how spurious his pretension of innocence, the apex court would still grant him a full hearing, which would drag on for weeks and months to edge ever closer to the next year, 2018 which is widely believed to be the year of the next general election in Pakistan?
Is he smart enough to play GHQ and its ornate guardians-in-khaki for suckers?
Does he really want to deliberately goad the country in the direction of anarchy, which, in turn, would force the generals’ hands to impose their disciplined will and expose the country, once again, to the blight of military rule?
It’s difficult, if not also taxing to intelligence, to come up with precise answers to these questions. However, the behavior of an apparently clueless Nawaz and his bunch of foul-mouthed minions, suggest that they may be hoping to hit the bull’s eye on all of these questions, or at least one of them.
Given the compulsion on the apex court to probe every conceivable avenue of transparent justice in this case, it shouldn’t surprise anyone if its proceedings in the case do, in the end, take us well into the election year, next year. The court, from its angel, would hate to give any fodder to anyone to paint a story of rush to judgment and denying Nawaz a full and thorough hearing.
Decrying the JIT’s report and findings as total ‘farce’ and questioning the motives of the JIT members who didn’t mind going through this sordid saga with a fine-toothed comb, is a ploy deployed precisely to corner the court into lengthy proceedings. The court would, understandably, hate to be accused of bias or predilection.
Painting their man, Nawaz, as the target and victim of a ‘conspiracy’ hatched by his detractors and enemies (read, Imran Khan) to tarnish his persona and reputation is calculated to raise the political and national temperature to the boiling point.
The man on the street can’t be blamed for interpreting the obvious delay in dispensing with a notorious thief—in their eyes—and consigning him to the dust bin of ignominy where he fully deserves to belong as miscarriage of justice.
Imran and others arrayed against Nawaz in the political arena shouldn’t be blamed, either, for coaxing the people to hold Nawaz fully accountable at their bar of justice, if the apex court can’t be seen dispensing quick justice, or is perceived as such. That would be a proven prescription for confrontation spilling out of control and spawning anarchy.
If things come to that pass, GHQ would be fully entitled—nay, obligated under the law of the land—to step into the breach and enforce their writ in the interest of averting a national catastrophe.
This pundit, like any other, would hate to indulge into kite-flying of any kind. But, then, there are straws in the wind, aplenty, to suggest that Nawaz is hoping, desperately, for this very scenario in which he is kicked out of office by a military edict rather than a judicial verdict like the one that had sent Yusuf Raza Gilani packing.
A thief hoping to become a martyr isn’t so wild a flight of fancy, after all. Given the paucity of choices, Nawaz couldn’t hope for better. - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com
(The author is a former ambassador and a career diplomat)
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