The Panama crawl

After yet another fruitless day in the Supreme Court the Panama Papers hearings have been adjourned until November 30. The Honourable Justices had no other option when confronted with bales of paper that came from both the Sharif family and their principal accusers the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), much of which was of dubious evidential quality. The Counsel for PTI got things off to a slow start by reading out two of the three speeches made to Parliament by the PM regarding the matter. The Bench wanted to know how ownership of the flats in question could be proved one way or the other, and who owned them and when. The Bench also pointed out that the bringing of case after case was taking nobody forward and that the court was being sidetracked from the principal focus of its work.



There was some arcane legal to-and-fro but it was clear that nothing was going to be resolved and adjournment was the only course of action with both sides having managed to create the equivalent of a legal whiteout. We are no nearer the formation of the promised Judicial Commission and there is indication that this matter could drag on. The PTI has failed to deliver a knockout blow in terms of clear and unequivocal proof that the PM specifically was guilty of anything other than some decidedly shady property dealings outside of Pakistan and not in violation of any local tax laws. The PM has not helped his own case by advancing statements in the last week that contradict those he made earlier, including statements to Parliament — in which event he may be guilty of lying to Parliament which is in itself a serious offence.



What if anything is going to be resolved between now and the November 30 is unclear, but any political resolution on the matter of the Terms of Reference for the Judicial Commission is an impossibility. The apex court is placed in an unenviable position by the intractability of both parties, and we have reached a poisonous stalemate.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 18^th, 2016.

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