As expected, the publication of the NRO beneficiaries' names has provoked strong protests, with some senior re-employed bureaucrats leading the charge. But if their rebuttals/clarifications are given a dispassionate hearing, some, if not all of them, have a case. The list abounds in mistakes, earning it accusations ranging from prejudice to partiality, to bureaucratic lethargy.
Since the ball is coming back into the court of the judiciary and the NRO beneficiaries are no more a political question, what they contest therefore deserves due consideration. Take the case of Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ebad. The fact is there was no case pending against him when he took over in December 2002, because the FIR that had been registered against him in 1992 was declared legally nullified before he took over as governor.
But he says despite his privilege not to appear before the court he will go there for he believes in the supremacy of law. Salman Farooqi, who too has offered to appear before the court, is furious because he has been lumped with the guilty though he says he is innocent, and so is Wajid Shamsul Hasan, cases against whom were quashed by the courts and he did not plead relief under the NRO. And how are you going to try ex-senator Haji Gulsher because he is no more in this world.
Rightly then, Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani had smelt a rat in the NRO beneficiaries list; he says he himself saw the name of his wife in the list but when the Minister of State for Law Sindhu presented the list at a media conference two days later, her name was not there.
That the list was changed - can there be any other explanation to this? Maybe there were two or more lists, or maybe some names were added to and some others deleted from the original list, one would not know. But surely in its present form the list lacks credibility, providing some moral high ground to those who contest its contents.
Then there is the queer incidence that with a very few exceptions all the listed political beneficiaries belong to two political parties. Is it that only these parties produce corrupt politicians and not the rest? There is, in fact, a strong undeniable dimension of political victimisation to the NRO saga, given the fact that it was the PPP dissident President Farooq Leghari who instituted most of the cases against his erstwhile colleagues in the PPP.
However, it is not our argument that the NRO was the right thing to do and all the beneficiaries are innocent. But we do insist that the list made public by Sindhu is suspect for its credibility and fairness. Therefore, it would be only fair and just that the list should be cross-checked under the guidance of a superior court.
It is also necessary that the comment in the media, or elsewhere, should be within the golden principle of jurisprudence that until proved guilty, one is always innocent. Let the courts decide the fate of the NRO beneficiaries. Maybe, in some cases the prosecution would fail to present charges with the required force of law and elocution, but one can't envisage a situation where such lopsidedness would escape notice of the superior judiciary.
Paraphrased, there must be a few in the list who are innocent, they should be spared adverse publicity and comment; the NRO beneficiaries should face the courts and defend themselves; and looking to the future, the politicians should commit to shunning the ugly practice of victimising their adversaries. In the meanwhile, the existing anti-corruption laws should be updated, and the accountability process and mechanism made strong and independent, possibly under the direct supervision of the Supreme Court.