The Panama go-round

With the second tranche of the Panama Papers released, offshore assets of 259 more Pakistanis have now come to light

With the second tranche of the Panama Papers released on May 9, the offshore assets of 259 more Pakistanis have now come to light. The Panama Papers have brought something new to the political battleground in Pakistan — undeniability. They cannot be dismissed as a ‘conspiracy’ hatched to undermine political figures. They are made up of rock-solid documentary evidence that stretches back decades coming from an unimpeachable source and therein lies their potency. They will not fade with time and until the questions they raise are answered satisfactorily, they are not going to be allowed to drop off the radar.

It is the undeniability that is potentially the undoing of all who are named in the Panama Papers — not that they have necessarily done anything illegal, but that it was done at all, a commitment to opacity, a lack of transparency that inevitably feeds through to a lack of trust. It is the trust deficit that is being mined by the opposition parties (some of whose members appear in the Panama Papers themselves) and is an issue around which it is possible to unite without compromising the differences that each party has in other respects. The opposition is now demanding that the prime minister come to parliament to explain his and his family’s position regarding their acquisition of offshore holdings. The prime minister is unlikely to want to be publicly examined over the matter. The opposition says that they will boycott proceedings until he shows up. With the opposition united in common cause and with the undeniability of the Panama Papers themselves, the prime minister looks increasingly vulnerable. The longer he stays away from parliament, the more strident will be the calls for his presence, and even were he to appear in the House and be willing to answer the questions posed to him, even then the opposition is unlikely to be satisfied no matter how transparently he presents himself. Undeniability has powerful leverage — but is it a real game changer? Maybe.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 11^th, 2016.

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