The Combined Opposition is Blackmailing Imran Khan?
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada

 

It may be true that there’s hardly ever a dull moment in Pakistan’s political almanac. But what may also be true, if not truer, is that governing Pakistan remains haunted by one crisis after another. After being two years in power, Imran Khan (IK) could well be the best man around to vouch for the veracity of this statement.

The bad news for IK was that the PDM—the motley group of mostly discredited politicians and political factions in regress—parliamentarians who’d been invited by him to meet his party colleagues in the Speaker’s chamber, on Monday, January 25, didn’t turn up for the meeting. The good news was that Senator Qamar Naveed, of PPP, did show up while his other ‘opposition’ colleagues, chiefly from PML-N, chose to stay away.

PML(N) parliamentarians didn’t show up because they were busy, elsewhere in the parliament building, attending a meeting chaired by a non-parliamentarian Maryam Nawaz. That the two main parties of the opposition to IK’s government can’t seem to act together—and find it hard to stand shoulder to shoulder with each other—tends to substantiate PTI’s contention that these two have different agendas.

That may well be a fair statement that the only thing in common between Zardari’s disciples and Nawaz’ minions is their hatred of IK. Other than this, the only common glue for them—to keep them nominally adhering to the anti-IK platform—is their primary concern to keep their ill-begotten wealth, looted from Pakistan, beyond the reach of IK’s crusade to unearth their elaborate maze of corruption.

It’s because of their morbid fear of their bounty being under serious threat that they have lately been proactive in mounting a concerted campaign against NAB, the body charged with the onerous task of unraveling the massive loot of Pakistan’s political sharks. They are being robustly assisted by a rowdy chunk of the news media with a bonding of vested interest with the likes of Zardari and Nawaz.

Taking the heat of an offensive from thieves and their knaves, Justice (Retd.) Javed Iqbal, the NAB Chairman, seems to have decided to call the bluff of these merchants of crimes.

Addressing the Islamabad Chamber of Commerce, on Tuesday, January 26, Justice Iqbal denounced the snide allegations against NAB as “sinister propaganda.” He was unsparing in castigating prominent robber-barons for their inability to justify their sources of income while owning shopping plazas in Dubai. He didn’t mince words in the process of laying into his detractors and warning them that their “intimidation, threats or blackmailing” will not hold back NAB from doing its work.

A part of the vicious, targeted, anti-NAB propaganda is that NAB has been harassing the business community and purposely humiliating businessmen. This is exactly the charge that PML-N and PPP stalwarts have been making against IK that his policies are calculated to dull business activity in the country because these provide no incentives to business enterprises.

Justice Iqbal gave the lie to this anti-business narrative by quoting the figures of corruption references pending, at NAB’s behest, in various courts of justice. Out of a total of 1,235 cases not even one percent involved the business community.

Senator Saleem Mandviwala, a Zardari-minion and Deputy Chairperson of the Senate of Pakistan, has been in the forefront of this concerted political-media campaign to drag NAB’s reputation into dirt. Not too long ago, he threatened to take the case against NAB for intimidation and blackmailing of business houses to the EU Human Rights Commission in Brussels.

One shouldn’t blame a PPP politician like Mandviwala—nurtured by the likes of Zardari—to stoop to any level because he has a personal axe to grind against NAB. The anti-corruption watchdog has frozen more than three million shares, from a raft of companies, both genuine and bogus, in his name with the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) in connection with a monumental fake accounts case against master-thief, Zardari. Over-confident and inspired from the example of their boss, Don Zardari, who has yet to be held guilty in dozens of cases against him for corruption, the likes of Mandviwala have the gall to call out NAB for its alleged vindictiveness.

Among other charges, routinely mouthed by Mandviwala, is an allegation that about a dozen people have died in NAB’s custody, while several others have, according to him, committed suicide as a result of NAB’s harassment.

In his Islamabad Chamber of Commerce address, Justice Iqbal also gave the lie to this calculated calumny of Mandviwala. According to him, politicians, with mal-intent, have been callously mixing judicial custody with NAB-custody. He asserted that since he took on the mantle of NAB’s chairmanship, in 2017, there has been not a single case of NAB-custodial death. In fact, since 2002, there have been only two such deaths—in 2002 and 2004—and in both cases, the causes were natural death.

It’s good that the IK government has, apparently, decided to come up with a blend of stick-and-carrot policy to take the edge off the opposition’s offensive.

Justice Iqbal’s straight talk is the stick, while the carrot is IK’s softer pedal of in-parliament dialogue with the opposition. In doing so, he may have, unwittingly, taken the mask off the PDM crowd’s much-touted ‘unity.’

Bilawal Bhutto, leading the PPP charge in the absence of his impugned master-planner father Zardari, said to be terminally ill, is in favour of an ‘in-House’ challenge to IK. But this is unappealing to PML-N led by Nawaz’ overly-ambitious daughter, Maryam. On her behest, Ahsan Iqbal, a Nawaz factotum, who’s nominally Secretary-General of PML-N, has challenged Bilawal to ‘show the numbers’ in the Assembly that could be counted upon to unseat IK through a no-confidence motion in the House. Bilawal, apparently, hasn’t done the necessary home work to answer Ahsan Iqbal.

But Maryam, desperate to be taken seriously as another Benazir Bhutto, is carrying on her vicious anti-Imran tirade in her own style. She was the one holding court of a hundred or so PML-N parliamentarians in hog to Daddy Nawaz, while PTI parliamentarians were cooling their heels, waiting for them to show up in the Speaker’s office.

Maryam’s strategy, as of now, seems pegged on seeking any kind of accommodation with the Establishment, which she thinks has IK dangling at the end of its stick. Her political calculus tells her that she should rather appeal to the ‘Umpire’ than wasting her time of Kaptan. This may look odd to a novice, but those honed in the politics of the Sharifs know that their entire raison d’etre for being in politics is because of their roots in the patronage of the Establishment. Maryam is just following in the footsteps of her discredited father, now a fugitive from law.

That the opposition is in disarray and has soldiers who can’t shoot straight, should be a source of comfort to IK. But he has his own brew of problems that he can only ill-afford to ignore, especially at a time like this when his government, half-way through its stipulated five-year term, has a slew of problems that could easily undermine him.

A wayward Sindh CM, Murad Ali Shah, corrupt to his bone-marrow, is openly challenging IK by proudly flaunting his status as head of the PPP-led government in Sindh. He’s dragging his feet on cooperating with IK on Karachi’s re-construction plan, which IK has been hawking as a totem of his concern for Karachi and its harried citizenry. IK must come up with a quick tactical move to blunt Murad Ali Shah’s offensive. His future in Karachi, and with its people who have been banking on him, is in the balance because of PPP’s unambiguous hostility to them.

The bottom line in the ongoing political drama—not unusual, at all, in the Pakistani experience—is that IK must stay at least one step ahead of his political nemeses. They need to be beaten at their own game. This would depend, entirely, on IK exposing their blackmail with a mix of guile and foresight. It may not be too tall an order in the interest of his political longevity. - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com

(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)