Leaking credibility

And so it appears Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif may yet survive as the Prime Minister of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. But at what cost to him and us all?

In handling the Panama leaks crises, the PML-N’s incompetence shone through. Then the PPP reminded us that it was always better at incompetence than the the PML-N. But before it could burnish its credentials, the PTI gatecrashed this unenviable club of incompetents with a performance that took our collective breath away. Zero versus zero plus zero adds up to?

When the outcome is zero, the scorecard matters not. And so we scan this sorry landscape and see what we had unfortunately expected to see. This is what I wrote on April 9 when the Panama Leaks had recently surfaced:



“The chronology is boringly predictable: scandal breaks, headlines are made, reactions pore in, hysteria builds up, defence is mounted, counter-accusations are flung back, side issues are raked up, fresh controversy develops, media changes gears, action is proposed to deflect the main issue, officials wheels move, events unroll as a consequence, drag on … Cut, paste into future scandal and see the pattern repeat itself again, and again.”

The more things change…

Six weeks later, the situation is not too dissimilar: The government/opposition committee may finally meet this coming week to try and formulate Terms of Reference (ToR) acceptable to all. The committee members want to finish this task in two weeks, but may extend the deadline if the task so demands. At some point during the holy month of Ramazan, they will get the ToRs locked, following which the required legislation will be done to give them legal cover. Once that is done (can all this be done before Eid?), the ToRs will be sent to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He will then take whatever time he deems necessary to study them and decide if they are in a shape acceptable to the Supreme Court. If he is satisfied, he will start the process of forming a commission. Once this commission is formed, it will begin hearings based on the ToRs. These hearings will entail summoning relevant officials and documents from various institutions, as well as trying to garner some evidence from abroad. Dates will morph into more dates as days stretch into weeks and weeks into months.



And while all this unfolds in slow motion, Nawaz Sharif will remain the Prime Minister, Khursheed Shah will stay as the Leader of the Opposition, and Imran Khan will be no closer to the PM House than he was two years ago.



Boringly predictable?

There could have been a silver lining to the entire issue had our political leadership from both sides of the aisle not turned it into a bitterly partisan political issue. At the core of the matter was a critical theme: transparency in the financial matters of those mandated by the people to exercise state authority. Had this line of inquiry been followed, many good things could have emerged, none perhaps more important than reforming agencies responsible for investigating white-collar crime.

Instead, the government went into ‘Save Sharif mode’ in response to the Opposition’s ‘Get Sharif’ campaign. What could have, and should have, been an opportunity to hold the mighty accountable by zeroing in on modes of professional investigation and reform of agencies like the FIA and NAB, became an individual-focused target operation.

At what cost?

For the Sharifs, the name and reputation got dragged through mud. The dirt of corruption that the family had dusted off after the 1990s came right back at them and now it may stick around for a while longer. The Prime Minister may have saved his job but at the cost of his reputation.

For Imran Khan and his band of merry men and women, Panama Leaks is turning out to be yet another huge slice of the humble pie that they will be forced to eat. Slipping into gradual irrelevance, Khan saw the scandal as his big ticket back into the big game. But bad reading of the situation, bad strategy and self-inflicted wounds like the emergence of offshore companies in his name and that of his close confidantes, all contributed to making his second attempt to oust Sharif a grand failure. Something is clearly rotten in the state of PTI, and it is now showing.



For the PPP, the cost isn’t that high. How much can you lose when you don’t have much to start with? Before Panama leaks, the PPP was a disaster — after Panama leaks the PPP is a disaster with a sense of humour because the PPP crusading against corruption is a fantastic joke that is blurring the line between comedy and tragedy.

And the cost for us all? Other than six weeks of political mayhem that brought governance to a screeching halt; other than a feverish grandstanding manifesting itself in public rallies and showering of state largesse; other than politicians exposing and accentuating one another’s failures without adding value to the system; other than the country not being any wiser in combating white-collar crime than before despite being handed an opportunity to do so; other than an alarming increase in contempt for the democratic project rather than a decrease; other than yet another failure to hold the mighty accountable for their deeds and misdeeds; other than a complete loss of focus on the National Action Plan and key components of social reform; and other than making Maulana Fazlur Rehman relevant yet again and ensuring madrassa reform is dead and buried thanks to his new-found clout – the cost to us is not much.

So there you have it: Panama leaked, and so did the credibility of those who run the Pakistani political system. When The Washington Post recently wrote that Pakistan had missed its “moment” yet again, it cut very close to the bone. When leaders switch off the light at the end of the tunnel, are the people right to ask if politics is too important to be left to the politicians alone?

Published in The Express Tribune, May 22^nd, 2016.

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