EDITORIAL: Of all the responses to the National Accountability (Amendment) Ordinance – most of them quite unflattering – MQM-P’s bewildered interpretation described it best.
Indeed, it is quite “un-understandable” that the government would suddenly want to extend the maximum period of physical remand in white-collar crime cases from 14 to 40 days and reduce the sentence of officers making cases against others on basis of ill-will from five to two years.
The fact that such swift and stiff criticism came from a crucial government ally betrays both a lack of a common direction as well as communication within the ruling coalition which, in the immediate aftermath of a very controversial election, cannot be good news for PML-N.
But that’s not all. It turns out that some senior leaders of the ruling party aren’t very happy about the ordinance either. Prominent among them is former federal minister Khwaja Saad Rafique who minced no words, typically, and called it a “black law”. Having faced a NAB investigation himself and kept in custody for a good 90 days, he no doubt speaks from bitter experience of how such laws lend themselves to convenient, politically motivated victimisation of the opposition in the guise of accountability.
Such things make it painfully clear that our political elite is in no mood to learn from the past. All of them, without exception, have taken turns being hounded by NAB, only to return the favour when the cycle turned. And even now, after all of them have made the same complaints one after the other, they are bent upon going round in circles.
These things also reveal a lot about the leadership’s sense of priorities. This is, without a doubt, the most fragile moment in the country’s history. Yet even as people wonder how they’ll manage the cost-push inflation tsunami that another IMF programme is bound to unleash, the government is busy sharpening NAB’s teeth; even at the risk of rattling an already shaky coalition.
It seems point-scoring and stoking rivalries will be the order of the day for a while to come. Corruption has eaten Pakistan to the core, no doubt, and it needs accountability more than anything else. But what are the people left with when checking corruption itself becomes an exploitative and very corrupt enterprise? They have seen this circus go on for far too long for anybody’s benefit. In such divisive times the test of mature politicians is the ability to find common ground and direction for everybody; for the benefit of the whole nation.
The ruling party needs to take a step back and reassess the overall situation. Before embarking on any controversial adventures it must ask itself if it is on track to honouring its promise of stabilising the economy and improving the lives of people while keeping its own coalition happily in place.
Anything that interferes with this trajectory in any way needs to be pushed down the to-do list immediately. Its real headaches, and the people’s, will start when it is time to implement tough IMF conditions in return for the bailout that will keep default away, so it is best not to waste any time and/or effort on matters that do not serve the long-term interests of the country.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024