PPP co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari has been celebrating his acquittal by a NAB court in the last and final of six corruption references against him, as a newspaper report put it, thanks to a 'friendly' and 'weak' prosecution. Interestingly, however, like the Nawaz Sharif family invoking Allah's name to deal with Panama Papers revelations, he claimed God was on his side saying, "it's a blessing of Allah Almighty that jiyalas [PPP zealots] became victorious." Only Allah knows what lies ahead on the Day of Judgment. What we know is that the jiyalas, faced with embarrassing situations, can now rely on their leader's acquittal in all corruption cases to defend him in public conversations. There are some mischievous individuals, though, who can still give them hard time, like Khuda Baksh Chandio was repeatedly asked by a TV talk show host to give a yes or no answer to his question whether Zardari Sahib was the owner of the £4 million Surrey Mansion. So far spared such an awkward query, Senator Saeed Ghani was quick to claim his party leader's acquittal had proved he was an innocent man implicated in baseless cases.
If it proves anything it is that the system is rigged in favour of the rich and powerful. True, most of the cases were initiated by the PPP's main rival of the past, the Nawaz League, and vice versa, and also that the PPP leader spent eleven long years in the slammer. The accountability institutions served as mere tools in the hands of whosoever was in power to settle scores with the other. But it is also true that the cases were not baseless, and ultimately got resolved in an 'I scratch your back and you scratch mine' understanding between the two political parties' leadership. Military dictator General Pervez Musharraf also used the cases for his own purposes. He stopped pursuing various pending corruption suits against Nawaz Sharif when he struck a deal with him to stay out of the country for ten years, as well as the PPP leaders' $ 60 million money laundering case in a Swiss court in exchange for another deal, the infamous NRO. Unluckily for the PPP, however, the matter did not end there. After the party returned to power and Zardari became president, Parliament would not indemnify the NRO. The Swiss bank account, along with thousands of other closed lawsuits involving another party, was reopened. The real test of innocence came when then chief justice Iftekhar Muhammad Chaudhry insisted that the government write a letter to the Swiss authorities to revive the case. The letter could not be written, argued Zardari's handpicked prime minister, because the Constitution granted the president immunity from prosecution, and lost his job for being in contempt of the court. Complying with the court order did not mean the president was to be hauled up before a foreign court while in office, as an otherwise sharp legal mind PPP's Aitzaz Ahsan would have us believe; it was only to restore the case before it became time-barred. There are several examples wherein this constitutionally guaranteed protection did not prevent legal action, such as that of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who was accused of accepting financial contribution for his election campaign from a fashion house heir, L'Oreal's Liliane Bettencourt. Since Sarkozy enjoyed immunity as president, investigators waited till his term expired to start questioning him.
Although Zardari is said to be a smart politician his alleged financial wrongdoings were never a secret; Mian Nawaz Sharif, on the other hand, has been a skillful operator - the Panama scandal hit him only accidentally. Wearing a mask of innocence once he asked a journalist from Sindh, why are Sindhi politicians so corrupt? The answer - it would find an unexpected substantiation in the Panamagate - explained the difference between the questioner and the questioned: it is like a Punjabi and a Sindhi eating mangoes. Whereas the former would carefully dispose of the fruit skin and seeds, the latter would leave them around for all to see.
A few bits and pieces of the Volume-X of the JIT report appearing in the media indicate the Sharif family-owned four pricey flats in London - the subject of current investigations - are only the tip of a huge iceberg. There are many other icebergs owned -commensurate with each owner's status - by politicians, their hangers - on, bureaucrats, businessmen, judges and generals. These corrupt elites have been mercilessly looting and plundering this poor nation's resources. Earlier this year, US State Department's International Narcotics Control Strategy report said Pakistan loses more than $ 10 billion a year to trade-based money laundering, ie, by using legitimate trade to disguise proceeds from unscrupulous sources. There of course are other illegitimate means of laundering ill-gotten money to be stashed away in foreign banks or buy properties in the UAE and various Western countries. In a written reply to a PTI legislator's question, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar told the National Assembly in May 2014 that at least $200 billion sitting in Swiss banks alone belong to Pakistanis. Quoting statements by a Swiss banker and a former minister he explained: "One of the directors of Credit Suisse AG stated on the record that $97 billion worth of Pakistani capital was deposited only in his bank. Similarly, Micheline Calmy-Rey, a former Swiss foreign minister, is reported to have put the amount of Pakistani money hidden in Switzerland at $200 billion - a statement that was never contradicted."
Compare just this money with Pakistan's total external debt, around $79 billion, and consider the fact that the country is on the verge of default. It becomes plain why we are in such dire straits. While at least 40 percent of the people live below the poverty line and most others struggle to make ends meet, the US president wants to drag this country still deeper into the Afghan war, brandishing not-so-veiled threats of using economic - and possibly military - pressure to have us play along. Fortunately for now, we have other influential players on side. But Pakistan will never be able to stand on its feet, defend its sovereignty and independence unless its Augean stables are thoroughly cleaned up.
saida_fazal@yahoo.com