Rinse, spin and repeat

The composition of the bench to hear the Panama Papers case is of interest to both the government and to the PTI

The Panama Papers affair is beginning to take on the aspect of one of the cycles found on automatic washing machines. The incoming Chief Justice of Pakistan, Mian Saqib Nisar, is to take the oath on December 31, and high on his to-do list is going to be the formation and the composition thereof of a bench that will hear — again — matters referring to the Panama Papers. ‘Again’ is the operative word, as there have already been ten hearings that have considered a small mountain of documents supporting petitions that are seeking the disqualification of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on the grounds that his family had used offshore accounts to park their considerable wealth. The matter now winds back to the beginning as the hearings were terminated by the retirement of Chief Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali on 30^th December; and the case adjourned to the first week of January 2017.

The composition of the bench to hear the Panama Papers case is of interest to both the government and to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) led by Imran Khan. The PTI saw their efforts to unseat the PM come to naught and we are now faced with the prospect of every document being re-examined. At previous hearings the bench appears to have vacillated between being adversarial or inquisitorial, and the PTI and the PM both drew comfort from the perception that matters were judicially inclined in their direction. The new CJ is in post at least for two years and there is a surfeit of time to reach a legal conclusion. The PTI was unable to land a killer punch at the last set of hearings with much of their documentation being judged as irrelevant in evidentiary terms. Presentation of the same material may produce similar conclusions. How the new CJ manages the various pressures that surround this case which has the potential to be existential in terms of the life of the sitting government, is going to determine the timbre of his tenure. Money trails, princes, timelines and evidence rather than mere allegations are going to feature large in the coming month. Rinse, spin and repeat. 

Published in The Express Tribune, December 31^st, 2016.

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