Unnecessary confrontation

The face-off between the government and the Supreme Court over the National Insurance Company Limited (NICL) scam seems to be growing more and more tense. There is now not even an attempt to hide the open hostility that has come forward. The court, with the bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, has made it quite clear it is furious over the refusal of key FIA officials to appear before it despite repeated summons and has threatened to have DG FIA Tahseen Hassan Shah arrested and forced to appear before it if he does not do so voluntarily. Annoyance has also been expressed about similar behaviour from other FIA officials and the answers provided by the government which the court has deemed unsatisfactory. The main issue, of course, concerns the return of Zafar Ahmed Qureshi, the man whom the court believes holds the key to settling the case fairly, and in a manner that can ensure justice is done. What is also worth thinking about is how far the judiciary should be able to intervene in its administrative matters. This has been raised by legal experts at various points.

However, there is no denying that the government appears to be involved in an effort to avoid the truth from emerging. This is a dangerous exercise. Many will favour the court in its determination to discover what truly happened to the money whisked away from the NICL accounts. It is important that this happen. Every institution of the state should be playing its part in working towards this, rather than engaging in potentially dangerous tussles which could complicate the running of national affairs and also add to the widely held notion that corruption is protected by the elite and cronyism is something they are completely unwilling to give up. The NICL case is a prime example of this. The kind of animosity we have been seeing in the court room has been going on for far too long. It needs to be settled before any lasting damage is inflicted and the petty antics we have seen during the hearings brought to an end so that matters can proceed in a suitably dignified fashion.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 27^th,  2011.