Justice for a Mega Offender: Pakistan Style
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada
As these lines are being written, the disgraced Nawaz Sharif is winging his way to London. True to his regal style, he isn’t travelling like an ordinary Joe. Instead, he’s travelling aboard an ambulance plane, courtesy of his mentors in the Gulf Sheikhdom of Qatar.
But even in this journey his and his whole clan’s habitual duplicity and deception is writ large. His medical condition was supposed to be critical, almost terminal. However, the world saw a spectacle in which Nawaz Sharif stood firm on his legs and boarded the plane without assistance. This is ‘critical’ Nawaz style.
And still more deceptive surprise was in store. He was supposed to travel to London on a Qatari ‘air ambulance.’ But, lo and behold, it turned out to be a VVIP plane of the Qatari Royal family’s personal aircraft, with 5-star facilities. His minions are saying the Qatari royalty has provided the plane gratis.
The Sharifs should earn a place in history books of Pakistan as master con-artists, if not for their myriad crimes against the nation.
For months, Nawaz and his clan of sycophants and hangers-on had tilted at umpteen windmills to seek his release from prison where he was serving a well-deserved sentence for his loot and plunder of Pakistan.
Imran Khan’s oft-repeated and stridently-hammered resolve to not cut a deal with Pakistan’s mega-thieves—among which Nawaz is a dubious luminary, along with Asif Zardari—at any cost barred his bid to get out of the slammer and Pakistan. Nawaz and cronies found it extremely frustrating to make any dents, or find any chinks, in Imran’s armor.
In the end, however, it was an obliging and pliable Lahore High Court that eased Nawaz’ bid to find a way out and circumvent, with dubious judicial help, Imran’s determination to block his exit.
Pakistan’s top judiciary has an ignoble history of bowing to the powerful and the privileged.
Starting with CJ Munir’s starkly anti-democratic verdict in favor of the establishment—and against the then Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, in 1954—the Pakistani judiciary has accumulated, one after the other, a lot of black spots on its inglorious dossier. One would be hard placed to find a parallel to the poke-marked track-record of the Pakistani judiciary. The judicial murder of ZAB, to oblige the then Bonaparte, General ZiaulHaq, stands out for its crudity and miscarriage of justice. Endorsing the showman General Musharraf’s ‘emergency’ as legitimate is another.
But Lahore HC has taken pandering to the rich and the privileged to a new frontier.
Of course, it isn’t the first time in its deplorable roster of service to the Sharifs that LHC has scripted a new low in its moral degradation. Leave aside the abominable Justice Qayyum—now said to be living it up in Dubai on the Sharif clan’s largesse—who wrote his judgment against BB after clearing it with the notorious Shahbaz Sharif. In a recent instance, Shahbaz’ hectoring son, Hamza, was provided bail on a court holiday; Hamza was not even required to show himself up at the court. The bail was delivered to his door-step. Some service, one might say.
No wonder, therefore, that LHC—which over the years has richly earned the damning sobriquet of a family concern of the Sharifs—has once again given evidence of its being an adjunct of the Sicilian mafia that the thieving Sharif clan is, according to the apex court of Pakistan.
It’s a risible judgment delivered by the ever-obliging and supine (to the Sharifs) LHC to bail Nawaz out of Imran’s hands. It allows a critically ill Nawaz to go abroad—to London, of course, where much of the Sharif’s loot and plunder of Pakistan is stashed—for an interim period of just 4 weeks.
But a relief of four weeks looks scanty: too little, too short, when matched with Princess Maryam Nawaz’ litany of medical conditions afflicting her father. It doesn’t wash against the princess crying herself hoarse that her inglorious father may need months, if not years, before he fully recuperates.
Never mind, Princess. Don’t fret over this four-week limitation. The two honorable judges had to give their kangaroo court verdict some semblance, after all, of civility and honor. But they have left ample room for extension in the relief slot if warranted by medical evidence. And who said such medical evidence would be hard to come by when you have enough ‘small change’ to spare from your tens of billions of dollars. To you, everything is a purchasable commodity, isn’t it?
The real, yeoman, service the LHC bench has delivered to Nawaz and Shabaz is by its calculated and calibrated affront to Imran’s legitimate demand that Nawaz furnish a money-guarantee to ensure he’d return home.
All that the govt. was asking of Nawaz was 7 billion, rupees not dollars. That would be small change for the Sharifs in the real sense of the term.
But the Sharif-friendly LHC could sense the trap in it. Furnishing that guarantee would seal Nawaz’ dubious distinction of being a thief. So, literally thumbing its nose at the govt., the court dismissed that demand as inadmissible.
Instead, it has issued its carte blanche to Nawaz in return for a paper undertaking—a personal guarantee—of younger brother Shehbaz Sharif that his brother would come back as soon as cured.
Personal undertaking of Shehbaz Sharif, a thief himself, impugned in at least half-a-dozen cases of corruption and extortion!
Nothing could have more transparently exposed the court’s predilection in favor of the Sharifs. How can a thief furnish a guarantee for another thief? Give us a break, LHC. The Pakistanis have had their fill of your deceptions and dirty tricks.
Pundits may take umpteen bets for or against Nawaz ever returning to Pakistan’s shores, now that a legal hatch, of sorts, has been opened for him by his trust-worthy LHC. Conventional wisdom says he’d be naïve, in the extreme, to return to a Pakistan still in thrall to his nemesis, Imran Khan.
Imran has reason to be frustrated. He has been made to lose a battle against a notorious thief. There was a lot of talk, in the air, and speculations aplenty that a deal had been cut with Nawaz: freedom to escape the coop in return for tens of billions of his loot returning to Pakistan’s coffers. However, this transparent legerdemain by LHC negates all such speculations. But there is still hope for Imran winning the war on corruption of the rich and the powerful with the blessings and support of those Pakistanis who understand that without clearing the decks off all the filth these master criminals, like Nawaz, have strewn all over, Pakistan’s future will be in jeopardy.
Those wishing Pakistan well will be in the right to say, good-riddance. Pakistan will be a better place without the likes of Nawaz and Zardari, and all those who are still infatuated with these plunderers of Pakistan.
What now, is the question staring Imran Khan more than anybody else?
Imran’s mettle has been tested from his day-one in power. But lately his leadership has come under greater strain, largely because his government has been unable to tame the beast of rampant inflation and spiraling cost of living that is crushing the common man under its burden. This has emboldened his rivals—most of whom under NAB’s microscope for loot, plunder and corruption—to become more strident in their offensive.
MaulanaFazal’s ‘long march’ to Islamabad and his 13-day dharnaat the door-step of Islamabad was a manifestation of this newfangled confidence of his rivals to challenge him, head on, because they think his flanks have been exposed.
Fazal’s drama fizzled out, as it was destined to. However, the fact that Fazal and cohorts were given a free pass to the outskirts of Islamabad—by whom, that remains unanswered—exposes the fault-lines in Imran’s rule and governance.
So, its crunch time for kaptan. It’s the moment of truth for him and his call. He has to decide if he would still prefer to play on the back-foot or, as was his wont in cricket, come to the front foot.
Imran’s aficionados are becoming despondent. They may still believe in him but their confidence has been shaken. They lament that he has already wasted too much time through procrastination. They rue that he should’ve gone on the front foot within months of becoming PM, declared financial emergency in the country, and consigned plunderers like Nawaz and Zardari to dungeons where they belong. It’s still not too late. But he should start acting now and get going before another Fazal rises to his feet to throw him another gauntlet. - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com
(The writer is a former ambassador and career diplomat)
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