Accountability

Letter September 06, 2016
Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif governments have followed suit in giving clean chits to financial criminals

LAHORE: Pakistan is in the grip of economic and political instability, while terrorism and the criminal black economy haunts security of life and state sovereignty. From the moment our establishment and its politically engineered politicians shelved the Quaid-e-Azam’s vision for constitutional rule and the role of paid public officeholders in a modern democratic welfare state, with zero tolerance for corruption, this country has been in a constant state of turmoil.

None of the major stakeholders appear to be interested in across-the-board accountability, or establishing the rule of law ir ensuring the welfare of the people because they all benefit from the status quo. In 1992, the Nawaz Sharif government passed a controversial law allowing citizens holding foreign currency accounts to transfer money abroad. Everybody criticises this controversial law which facilitates money laundering but neither Benazir Bhutto, General (retd) Pervez Musharraf, Asif Ali Zardari, nor the MQM, who have all held power, ever tried to strike it down.

Institutional comradeship and the nexus of the corrupt ensured that no individual is punished, nor is any such precedent set. When institutional ego, corporate interests and individual greed shroud and shape national policies and foreign relations, and politicians elected to hold constitutional offices, or state-employed servants, indulge in business ventures, then economies and institutions collapse and nation-building or development of human resources becomes a casualty.

Just take the case of Altaf Hussain, who, in 1984, allegedly burnt the Pakistan flag at the Quaid’s mausoleum, yet Ziaul Haq considered him useful to confront the PPP in Karachi, just like he patronised sectarian groups and promoted biradari politics, to divide this nation, so that no national opposition could confront his dictatorial rule. General (retd) Musharraf made a mockery of accountability, just like Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, whom he ousted, by allowing the National Accountability Bureau to be a laundromat for corrupt persons willing to join his government. Both the Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif governments have followed suit in giving clean chits to financial criminals on the basis of the much-abused plea bargain system of NAB.

Malik Tariq Ali

Published in The Express Tribune, September 6th, 2016.

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