Under the Islamic code, public office-holders cannot indulge in trade or business beneficiaries during their tenure
LAHORE: This is with reference to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s speech in the National Assembly on May 16, where he disclosed that the Sharif family sold their Dubai-based steel mill, built in 1980, for $9 million. On February 27, 1997, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif launched the National Debt Retirement Scheme to solicit funds from non-resident Pakistanis and resident Pakistanis asking them to submit their foreign currency accounts, traveller cheques, remittances from abroad or simply surrendering hard foreign currency as either outright donations or qarz-e-hasna deposits for a minimum period of two years with the option to take the principal amount in Pakistani rupees or a profit bearing the deposit for a minimum period of two years. Yet, the prime minister knowingly chose to keep his family-owned $9 million out of Pakistan. Does this not constitute as deliberate concealment of assets? Is this expected of the prime minister of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan? This has raised plenty of more issues of credibility and integrity than resolved doubts arising after the disclosure of the Panama leaks.
I suggest that the title Islamic Republic of Pakistan be changed to the Emirates of Pakistan, where we elect sultans who are neither answerable to the people nor the National Assembly, exempt from paying taxes, and yet have a moral and legal right to rule a country, which they do not consider safe for their own families to live in, nor do they trust their assets to be located here. This, unfortunately, seems to be the outlook and the mindset of a large majority of our political elite and paid bureaucracy who have held high offices in the recent past.
It is primarily an Islamic code that rulers and public office-holders cannot indulge in trade nor be beneficiaries of any business during the tenure of their public office, but it is routinely flouted here.
Malik Tariq Ali
Published in The Express Tribune, May 20th, 2016.
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