Rumblings
Rashed Rahman
The sudden
arrest on October 5, 2018 by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) of Leader
of the Opposition, president of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), and
former chief minister Punjab Shahbaz Sharif has rocked the polity. As expected,
the PML-N and increasingly the opposition have castigated the move as political
victimisation. One aspect of this critique is the timing on the eve of the
by-polls on October 14, 2018. Perhaps it is the fear that the PML-N’s campaign
in these by-polls will be affected by the absence of Shahbaz Sharif that has
prompted Nawaz Sharif to curtail the period of mourning for his wife and chair
a meeting of the party’s Central Executive Committee in Lahore on October 8,
2018. The opposition has requisitioned a session of the National Assembly to
discuss the arrest of Shahbaz Sharif, allegedly without seeking the mandatory
permission of the Speaker.
In Punjab’s
capital city, Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan visited, as usual (it seems)
presided over a Punjab cabinet meeting, and later held a press conference. Although
federal Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry has been the main point man of the
ruling PTI for policy statements, this time PM Imran Khan decided to tackle the
task personally. In the event, what he said was not new but a rehash of the
PTI’s narrative of many years. The thrust of that narrative boils down to the
assertion that it is corruption and the looted wealth secreted abroad by
Pakistanis that is the root of all the country’s problems. This implies that if
these two issues are tackled by curbing corruption and retrieving the looted
wealth deposited abroad, all the economic, social and political problems of the
country will be over.
This simplistic
notion can be challenged at many levels. First and foremost, the PTI
government’s long standing argument that stemming corruption will fix
governance can be questioned on two counts. Conceptually, a ‘pure’,
corruption-free system may be unattainable at the best of times and certainly
not under capitalism, which glorifies the pursuit of material riches. Even the
most developed capitalist countries of the world are not free of this malaise
except that it is carried out there in more sophisticated ways and by bending
the laws to advantage. Scandals of corruption nevertheless are still standard fare
in even those societies. At best, the drive against corruption without changing
the capitalist foundations of our system can help reduce the incidence of
corruption without entirely eliminating it from its entrenched position or, at
worst, drive corruption further ‘underground’ (thereby increasing the cost).
As far as the
wealth nestling abroad is concerned, the shifting of the PTI government’s
goalposts almost every day through differing estimates of the amount waiting to
be recovered points not only to the difficulty of obtaining this information
but also the lack of firm figures with the government. In his Lahore press
conference PM Imran Khan again came out with a fresh figure in this regard of $
nine billion laundered abroad (previous estimates have on occasion been as high
as $ 30 billion). Pakistan has been unable to access Swiss banks’ information
regarding Pakistani account holders so far. How far the campaign to identify
properties owned by Pakistanis in Dubai, UK and elsewhere can take us is still
indeterminate.
The government
intends, according to PM Imran Khan in his presser in Lahore, to enact
whistleblower and witness protection laws, with the former incentivised by a 20
percent reward for all wealth recovered. ‘Recovery’ may also get entangled in
the laws of the country in which the wealth lies.
The basic
question remains whether all this will be enough (assuming even all the targets
are reached) to turn round the ailing economy. The likelihood of another IMF
programme looms large to tackle the twin deficits on external and budget
accounts. Second, doubts and suspicions surrounding the accountability drive when
it seems oriented to targeting opposition figures and the bureaucrats allegedly
‘attached’ to them seem destined (and in fact are) reviving memories of NAB
being used in the past to pillory opposition leaders in a marked partisan
manner.
NAB is following
a familiar script. Its unintended consequence could well be a grand opposition
alliance. Circumstances are compelling even the PML-N and PPP to come closer in
the face of an all-out assault on the former and a relatively muted but
threatening unwelcome concentration on the latter. If the plan is to batter the
Sharifs into oblivion and relegate the Zardaris to the margins using the weapon
of seemingly partisan accountability, the result may turn out very different
from what was intended.
Judging by our
past history, such seeming victimisation of the opposition by the ruling party
has more often than not eventually translated into a movement of protest
against the latter. In our present circumstances, the rumblings of discontent
by the masses at the wave of inflation let loose by the government in its short
time in office could provide ammunition to a united opposition front that could
upset all the well laid plans of the mice and men centred in Banigala.
What would the
military establishment’s response be in such a scenario (PTI versus the rest)?
Having been accused of lending a helping hand to Imran Khan and company to make
it to the seat of power, how would the establishment respond to a broad
opposition front’s political challenge? Would the ‘model’ now in operation of a
controlled democracy with the military’s preferred party in power (so long as
it kowtows to the military’s policies) survive such a stir? We live in
interesting times.
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