Lifting the lid on secret deals

Yet another skeleton has tumbled out of the political closet. And it offers another glimpse of the skullduggery that seems to be a constant in our political life. Earlier this week, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif regaled a captive audience at the parliamentary party meeting of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League with a dark tale of how Gen Pervez Musharraf offered him an underhand power deal in 2007. The disclosure — though instantly refuted by an ex-aide to Musharraf — has come nearly a decade after it was originally made. Musharraf’s ex-aide Ahmed Raza Kasuri dismissed the claim as a desperate attempt by the prime minister to shore up his image that was sagging in the wake of the Panamagate affair. Such claims — even if they cannot be verified and rely largely on the truthfulness of the parties concerned — are unsettling because they bypass the electorate and have a stamp of illegality about them. In democracies this is not expected to happen.

The prime minister, by his own admission, turned down the then president’s offer. That was admirable of him. Clandestine agreements about taking power through this or that route are unacceptable whichever way you look at it. But surely the electorate or even the PML-N’s inner circle ought to have been told about this much earlier. Or better still, Mr Sharif could have explained why he had previously withheld this information.

And what about less significant parties and those on the fringes? Their sense of scruples isn’t likely to match that of the leader of a mainstream party. It is not uncommon for the leaders of smaller parties to be swayed by the promise of a political prize. But we do expect better from the leaders of major political groupings.

Prompt disclosure and other actions against secret deal-making can certainly help stave off the threat of undemocratic and illegitimate measures. But for that we need greater transparency to be shown by leadership in all spheres.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 24^th, 2017.

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