A bullet in both feet

It is rare indeed for a politician in Pakistan to get bundled over the side of the ship of state and into the briny deep, but Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had little choice when it came to ditching PML-N Senator Nehal Hashmi. The senator had made what he probably considered to be a career-enhancing speech that signified his loyalty to his leader in the PML-N, and instead found himself up to his neck in trouble. His speech openly threatened those that have sought to make the PM and his family accountable in the Panama Papers affair and by implication was threatening the members of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) whose members are sitting Supreme Court judges. He also aimed his fire at Imran Khan. All in all a misjudgment of cosmic proportions.

His speech was littered with statements unworthy of a mature politician and the PM has moved swiftly to make him walk the plank. The Chief Justice of Pakistan was likewise disenchanted and on Wednesday 31^st May took suo-motu notice of the remarks. For the PM this was a case of damned if he did and damned if he did not. He could hardly fail to move against the Senator, yet at the same time his move was in support of those currently bent on deepening the hole he has already dug for himself and his family members.

Whatever the findings of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) none of the political actors in the drama that is Panama Papers emerge with credit, and all are tarnished and/or discredited. Senator Hashmi was not even a player; he just committed the folly of trying to appear more loyal than the king and sealed his own fate in the process. A morass of claim and counter claim serves to obscure whatever really happened with money trails, property ownership and princely interventions and no matter how diligent the JIT wily politicos may yet have their way. And the senator? Excess baggage. Heave-ho.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 2^nd, 2017.

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