Where Do We Go from Here?
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada

At last, Asif Ali Zardari is in the slammer. Thank God for it. The only regret is that it took so long for the proverbial long arm of the law to reach this notorious character.

However, the fear still lurking in many an informed mind—and not without good reason—is that he may not be lodged there for long. Our courts are acquiring a reputation of sorts of their own—I hate to say, notoriety—for soft corner in their heart for Pakistan’s mega-thieves. It’s no longer a secret in Pakistan that with their fabulous wealth, looted mercilessly from the country, the likes of Zardari and Nawaz have little difficulty in shortening their confinement to prison.

None should doubt prime minister Imran Khan’s commitment to rid Pakistan of its principal bane: the hydra-headed monster of corruption that seems to have wormed its way into the innards of the Pakistani society. Imran hasn’t lost any of the verve and rhetoric that had animated his election campaign. The resolve to force the looters and tormentors of Pakistan into national oblivion and wilderness is still there.

Anyone suspecting a dilution in his crusading zeal need only focus on what he said in his address to the nation on June 11, on the heels of unveiling his first budget for Pakistan. A high-powered probe is going to be launched under his command into the massive borrowing by the two regimes of Nawaz and Zardari that sent Pakistan’s foreign debt skyrocketing on their watch. But is he on the right course to realize his target is the question agitating most pundits.

It isn’t unnatural, or unexpected, for the opposition forces to raise the alarm every time one of its luminaries is nabbed in accountability. They have no other strategy other than beating their chests, ostensibly for the government’s alleged high-handedness but, in essence, out of fear of their inevitable tryst with destiny. The most damning legacy of the two kleptocrats, Nawaz and Zardari, who shared power in sequence for ten long years is that they have spawned and nurtured cabals of corrupt politicians. These are carpetbaggers who hung on to their mafia bosses and, in the process, amassed vast fortunes of their own. Now that booty is under threat.

But IK’s crusade against corruption has also been checkmated by the judiciary because of its seemingly mollycoddling of Pakistan’s mega-kleptocrats. Zardari, in particular got so many pre-arrest bails that one easily lost count of them, until this day when he ran out of luck (or patronage?).

It isn’t a stretch of imagination to argue that IK has a two-front struggle on his hands: a raucous opposition, which every now and then threatens to join forces to up the ante against him and, two, an independent judiciary which might be doing its job fairly but its fairness isn’t helping Imran’s mission one bit. So how should he square this circle?

No ambitious political leader likes the idea of a watchdog looking over his shoulder. The judiciary isn’t a godfather but its more often-than-not soft-handling of the kingpins of Pakistani corruption does inconvenience Imran’s anti-corruption crusade. If nothing else, it retards progress. With little to show by way of concrete achievement to his followers in public—whose ranks are said to be dwindling by the day because they find nothing to feed their appetite for change from ‘old Pakistan’—IK shouldn’t be faulted for losing his patience.

But being frustrated shouldn’t lead the standard-bearer of a ‘New Pakistan’ to emulate the tactics of some of his discredited and failed forebears in the halls of power. His new Pakistan will end in ashes if he pursues the same route of self-destruction that brought down the likes of an over-ambitious General Pervez Musharraf.

Picking up a fight with an unhelpful or inconvenient judiciary is no panacea for success. The ‘leaked’ news of a reference filed before the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) against Justice Qazi Faez Isa, smacks of borrowing a leaf out of the book of a failed military autocrat.

It’s not only that the reference against Justice Isa revives the ghost of Musharraf’s piqued quest to bring the then CJ, Iftikhar Chaudhry, to heel. It also carries the miasma of a vindictive move against an ‘inconvenient’ judge.

Musharraf was power-besotted, which Imran isn’t. But, then, the 2007 attempted coup by Musharraf against the judiciary is still too fresh in everyone’s mind to not register on Imran’s mind, too.

Musharraf, despite his antics and plenty of theatrics ended up with lots of egg on his face in his fracas with Iftikhar Chaudhry. More to it, his exit from power was hastened because of the fallout from his naïve move to make a horrible example of his ‘inconvenient’ judge.

Besides, in taking up somebody else’s grudge against Justice Isa, Imran inadvertently may be fighting someone else’s battle—at the wrong time for an entirely wrong reason.

It was Justice Isa who authored the verdict, this past February, in the case filed before the apex court against the notorious perpetrators of the infamous Faizabad Siege of November 2017. Memories all around are still fresh and full of that sordid episode when Pakistan’s capital city was waylaid by hooligans and terrorists masquerading as guardians of Islamic faith. They held Islamabad and its denizens to ransom for more than a week. Worse was the spectacle of army officers, in uniform, caught-on-camera doling out cash incentives for carrying on the destructive game.

In his no-holds-barred judgment, Justice Isa, rightly, came down hard upon those ‘instigators’ pouring oil over the fires. Reprimanding them for their unbecoming conduct, he directed the Services Chiefs to discipline the wayward officers. It was a stinging denunciation from him of those seeing themselves as self-appointed guardians of Pakistan’s ideological frontiers, too.

This episode, still unfolding, has all the footprints of those who have become accustomed to flaunting their credentials of being ‘more Pakistani’ and ‘more patriotic’ than others. It harks back to 2007 and a vainglorious, puffed up, Musharraf’s naïve and tentative strive to make a horrible example of Iftikhar Chaudhry. Musharraf’s bluff was called by the legal community—Bar councils et al. —that stood solidly by the besieged CJ.

What defies common sense is why should Imran be so naïve, a la Musharraf, and go out on a limb to assuage some Pharaoh’s bruised ego? What’s in it for him? Will it help him in his crusade to bring to book Pakistan’s mega-thieves?

It may be too early to come up with answers to all those questions. But an obvious early inference is that by lending his services to pull someone else’s chestnut out of the fire Imran runs a clear and visible danger of burning his own fingers. One wonders whose advice, if any, is he working on?

When he skippered Pakistan’s cricket team, IK had the reputation of being stubborn. He brooked no interference in his captaincy from any quarters. It defies imagination that as leader of Pakistan—a far more challenging and daunting task than leading its cricket team—Imran should so quickly change his stripes and allow others to take advantage of him.

Keep your fingers crossed, everyone, for the SJC meeting on June 14 to hear the reference against Justice Qazi Isa. Wish Pakistan and Imran all the very best in this ordeal. One still wishes, however, that Imran had avoided getting his foot into this mess. - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com

(The writer is a retired ambassador and a career diplomat)