Do you believe in life after Panama?
By Imran Shirvanee
So what now that Panama Case is behind us? Or rather, as a lot of youthias are saying, has been decided?
But has it been decided? Seriously?
Just look at what the court has said in its two different decisions. The first one came on 20 April 2017, and the last one on 28 July 2017. This one actually includes the first one as well.
In the first decision, the apex court had formed the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to probe the accounts of Hussain and Hasan Nawaz. Maryam Nawaz and their father, the then prime minister Mian Nawaz Sharif, were excluded from the Panama inquiry though the court had pointed out that NS had to justify his wealth.
Apparently, he couldn’t.
But the Panama case, as far as Imran Khan’s assertions were concerned, had already gone out of window. What were left were NS’s undeclared assets. The court did try to make him accountable for his assets, though the JIT could not give much answers of this question too.
So what the court has done is bring in a technicality, the one brought up by the Jamaat-e Islami. Using a definition from a dictionary that was never discussed during the case, it has decided NS is not Ameen.
As if anybody else is.
I, for one, certainly am not. To believe that any of us can be pious enough to be declared Sadiq or Ameen is to have a holier-than-thou attitude in all our public claims. Let us be realistic: all we have are mortals like ourselves to choose from. If we decided to look for a superior race, we will have to ignore any desire for a democratically elected government in this country. There are several examples in our world telling us the importance of forming an inclusive society, democracy being a political manifestation of such a reality. Even in dictatorial China, there is an economic democracy to a certain extent that they claim has brought them the status of being the economic giant that they certainly are.
So do we want to live in poverty forever?
We will have to form a society that is realistically tolerant about our mediocrities. NS is yet to be declared corrupt: JIT has not found an iota of evidence that he misused his position of power in his personal favor. But we all believe he has skeletons in closets. Cat would soon be out of the bag, within seven and a half months to be precise (this is the time the second court verdict has given the NAB and the subsequent process to dig out NS accounts).
But what would that mean for us?
Pakistan—and Pakistanis—would not be richer because we have sent another prime minister packing on corruption charges. Time has proved that corruption is not the issue that confronts us, accountability is. We need to make our leaders accountable for all their deeds, not just those that deal with money.
Are we willing to strengthen this process of making our leaders answerable to us?
Unless we do that, there are no lessons to be learnt from this verdict. The court did what it had to do, give us a verdict. Good, bad, or ugly, this decision does not decide our future, our own acts do. So let’s act in a mature manner, and seek ways to make our leaders accountable. Courts are only an extreme recourse. We need political solutions for political problems. Let’s go beyond this Panama affair. Let’s look for a life after it.
